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THEORY OF MORALS: 

AN INQUIRY 



CONCERNING 



THE LAW OF MORAL DISTINCTIONS 



VARIATIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS 



ETHICAL CODES. 



By RICHARD HILDRETH. 



" For to say that a blind custom of obedience should be a surer obligation 
than duty taught and understood, it is to affirm that a blind man may tread 
surer by a guide than a seeing man can by a light." 

Bacon. — " Of the Advancement of Learning ," Book I. 



BOSTON: 
CHARLES C. LITTLE AND JAMES BROWN. 

1844. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by 

•Richard Hildreth, 

in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts 



CAMBRIDGE: 

METCALF AND COMPANY, 

PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITV. 



/ 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



/ / 



/3/ 



This is the first of six Treatises which collective- 
ly I propose to entitle " Rudiments of the Science 
of Man." They will be published in the following 
order : Theory of Morals, Theory of Politics, Theo- 
ry of Wealth, Theory of Taste, Theory of Knowl- 
edge, Theory of Education. 

The peculiarity of these Treatises will consist in 
an attempt to apply rigorously and systematically to 
their several subjects the Inductive Method of In- 
vestigation, — a method which in Physical Science 
has proved successful beyond expectation ; but which, 
hitherto, for powerful but temporary reasons, has 
been very partially employed, and, in consequence, 
with very small results, upon the yet nobler and 
more important Science of Man. The daily increas- 
ing interest with which that science is regarded, and 
the great social problems which depend upon it for 
solution, seem to demand for its several branches a 
more patient, thorough, comprehensive, experiment- 
al investigation, than they have yet received. Such 
will be the aim of these Treatises. However short 
of that aim I may fall, I shall at least claim the 
merit of an earnest, honest, thoughtful, laborious en- 
deavour. R. H. 

Boston, April 5th, 1844. 



CONTENTS. 



PART FIRST. 

OF MORAL DISTINCTIONS IN GENERAL. 



CHAPTER I. 
Moral Classifications of Actions. 

Sbction - Page 

1. Importance of Moral Distinctions, . . 1 

2. Search for their Nature or Law, . .1 

3. Platonic Theory of Morals, . 1 

4. First Objection to it, . . . , . 2 

5. Modified Form of that Theory. Second Objection to it, 2 

6. Selfish Theory of Morals, .... 4 

7. Paradoxes resulting from that Theory, • • . 4 

8. Modifications of it. The Stoics, . . .5 

9. The Epicureans, . . . . . 5 

10. The Semi-Stoics, « . . . . . 6 

11. The Semi-Epicureans, .... 7 

12. Both these Sects compelled to adopt the Idea of a 

Future Retribution, .... 8 

13. True Characteristic of Actions morally right and mor- 

ally wrong, ..... 9 

14. Distinctions to be noted, .... 9 

15. Human Actions the original Subject-matter of Moral 

Judgment, ...... 9 

16. Composite Nature of Actions. Event and Motive, 10 

17. Use of the Terms Right and Wrong, Virtuous and 

Vicious, Good and Bad, . . . . 10 

18. Positive and Negative Actions, . . .11 

19. Definition of Wrong Actions, . . . 11 



VI CONTENTS. 

20. Positive and Negative Sense of the Terms Pleasure 

and Pain, . . . . . ,11 

21. Definition and Classification of Right Actions, . 12 

22. The Classification of Acts externally considered, de- 

pendent on their Results, . . . .12 

23. Characteristics of Praiseworthy, Indifferent, and Wrong 

Actions, restated,- . . . . , 13 

24. Proofs of those Characteristics drawn from Moral Codes, 14 

25. They appertain to what are called Duties to Others. 

Justice, Benevolence, . . . . 16 

26. They appertain to what are called Duties to Ourselves, 17 

27. How Duties to Ourselves affect Others, . . 17 

28. Application of this Idea to the Case of Imprudence, 18 

29. To the Case of Intemperance in general, . . 18 

30. To the Case of Gluttony, . . . . 19 

31. To the Case of Intoxication, ... 19 

32. To the Case of Incontinence, . . . .20 

33. To the Case of Economy, . .... 21 

34. Duties to God. Mystic Hypothesis. Its Origin and 

Foundation, . . . . . . 21 

35. Origin of Religious Worship, . . . 23 

36. How Acts of Worship acquired the Character of Moral 

Duties, . . . . . .24 

37. Progress of Spiritualism, . . . . 25 

38. Mystic Theory of Morals, . . . .27 

39. Amalgamation of the Mystic and Selfish Theories, 27 

40. Theory of Utility, or of Interest well understood, . 28 

41. Objections to that Theory, . . . . 28 

42. Alleged Law of Human Action on which the Selfish 

Theory is founded, . . . . .30 

43. Mystic Application of the Doctrine of Selfishness to 

the Deity, . . . . . . 31 

44. Paradox of Self-sacrifice thence resulting, . . 32 

45. Divergent Schools of Semi-mystic Moralists to which 

that Paradox gives rise, . . . . 32 

46. Examination of the Selfish Theory, . . .33 

47. Corrected Statement of the Law of Human Action, 33 

48. Scholastic Notion of Happiness inconsistent with Facts, 34 

49. True Sense of the Word Happiness as descriptive of 

what is attainable, .. ... 35 



CONTENTS. Vll 

50. Necessary Connexion between Perception and Emotion, 36 

51. List of simple, original Emotions, ... .37 

52. Classification of Motives, .... 39 

53. Law of their joint Operation, . . . ,39 

54. Hopes and Fears, their Influence upon Action, . 39 

55. General Direction of human Action, . . .41 

56. Pleasures and Pains of Activity. Their Agency. Wea- 

riness, Ennui, ..... 42 

57. Difference in this Respect between the Child and the 

Man, the Savage and the Civilized, the Educated and 
the Uneducated, . . . . .43 

58. Sentiment of Benevolence. Love, Humanity, . 44 

59. Classification of Actions as Disinterested and Selfish, . 44 

60. Ambiguous Use of the Term Self-interest, . 45 

61. Sentiment of Benevolence the Source of Moral Distinc- 

tions, . . . . . . .45 

62. Difference between Good and Evil in general, and Mor- 

al Good and Evil, . . . . . 46 

63. Reasons of the superior Rank assigned to Emotions of 

Benevolence, . . . . . .47 

64. Plausibility thence resulting to the Selfish Theory, 47 

65. Reason why many benevolent Men adopted that Theory, 48 

66. Service they have rendered to practical Morals, . 48 

67. Selfish Defenders of Disinterestedness, . . 49 

68. Self-sacrificing Theory of Morals, . . .50 

69. Paradoxes to which that Theory leads, . . 51 

70. Required Modifications of the Disinterested Theory of 

Morals, ..... . 54 

71. Moral Estimate of Actions (looking to the Event) which 

produce complex Results, ... 54 

72. Moral Classification of Actions (looking to the Motive), 

as Meritorious, Obligatory, Indifferent, Permissible, and 
Criminal, .... . .55 

73. Considerations which determine this Classification stat- 

ed in five Propositions, .... 56 

74. Conclusions which will follow the Establishment of 

these Propositions, . . . . .58 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER II. 

Laws of the Operation of the Sentiment of Benevo- 
lence, AND OF THE OTHER PRINCIPAL EMOTIONS WHICH 
MODIFY OR CONTROL IT. 

1. Proposed Method of establishing and illustrating the 

above five Propositions, . . . 59 

2. First Law of the Action of the Sentiment of Benevolence, 59 

3. Consequences of that Law, . . . .60 

4. Complaint owes its Efficacy to that Law, . . . 62 

5. Pains ordinarily superior in Force to the Sentiment of 

Benevolence, . . . . . .62 

6. Second Law of the Action of the Sentiment of Benevo- 

lence, . ..... 63 

7. Sentiment of Malevolence. Law of its Action. Anger, * 

Retaliation, Revenge, . . . .64 

8. Mutual Relations of the Sentiments of Malevolence and 

Benevolence, . . . . . 65 

9. Origin of Punishments, . . . .66 

10. Variations in the Force of the Sentiment of Malevolence, 67 

11. Objects of that Sentiment, . . . .67 

12. How it spreads, . . . . . 68 

13. It often rests upon purely fanciful Grounds, . . 69 

14. Why we hate those we have injured, . . 70 

15. Third Law of the Action of the Sentiment of Benevo- 

lence, . . ... . .70 

16. Effect of visible Beauty upon Benevolence, . 71 

17. Effect upon Benevolence produced by the Voice and 

Faculty of Speech, . . . . .71 

18. Effect of the Sexual Sentiment upon Benevolence. Love, 72 

19. Effect of Admiration upon Benevolence. Romantic Love, 

Loyalty, Devotion, Indifference, Ennui, Contempt, 75 

20. Origin of Attachments or Friendships. Benefits, . 76 

21. Effect of Benevolence upon Benevolence. Gratitude, 76 

22. Coloring thence afforded to the Selfish Theory of Morals, 77 

23. Sentiment of Self-comparison. Law of its Action, 78 

24. Bashfulness, Pride, Vanity, Modesty, Humility, . 80 

25. Politeness, Flattery, Sycophancy, Popularity, , 81 

26. Various other Influences of the Sentiment of Self-com- 

parison, . . . . . 82 



CONTENTS. IX 

27. Government originates in it, . . . 82 

28. It constitutes the chief Motive to the Pursuit of Wealth, 83 

29. Ambition, Covetousness, . . . . 84 

30. The Sentiment of Self-comparison often cooperates with 

Benevolence, ..... 84 

31. Color hence given to the Stoical Theory of Morals, . 84 

32. Susceptibility to the Pain of Inferiority essential to or- 

dinary Virtue, ..... 85 

33. Desire of Superiority essential to extraordinary Virtue. 

Self-respect, Emulation, Shame, Love of Reputation, 
Love of Fame, Love of Glory, . . .86 

34. Pleasures of Virtue and Pains of Vice. Self-applause, 

Remorse, . . ,..-.-. . .87 

35. Reproach owes its Power to this Sentiment, . . 87 

36. Special Cooperations and Oppositions of Self-Compari- 

son and Benevolence, .... 88 

37. Paradoxes of Lucretius and Rochefoucault explained, 88 

38. Parental Love, . . . . ... 89 

39. Love of Knowledge chiefly dependent on Self-comparison, 90 

40. Moral character ascribed to the Love of Knowledge, 91 

41. Cooperation of the Sentiment of Self-comparison with 

Malevolence. Envy, Jealousy, Magnanimity, . 91 

CHAPTER III. 

Of certain Qualities or Temperaments, called Virtues, 
because they are essential to the performance of 
beneficial Actions. 

1. General Description of these Qualities or Temperaments, 92 

2. Wisdom, or Prudence, .... 92 

3. Courage. Distinction between Moral Fear, Fear of 

Shame, and Fear in general, . . . .92 

4. Necessity of distinguishing between Admiration and 

Moral Approbation, .... 95 

5. Fortitude, . .... 95 

6. Double Character of Courage and Fortitude, Physical 

and Moral, ..... 95 

7. False Shame, . . . . . .96 

8. Constancy, Firmness, Steadiness, Perseverance, Tem- 

per, Self-control, Patience, Fidelity, . . 96 



/ 



X CONTENTS. 

9. Hopefulness or Faith, Doubtfulness, Despondency, Skep- 
ticism, Folly, Credulity, . . .97 

10. Activity, Sloth, Indolence, Idleness, Industry, . 98 

1 1. Capacity or Ability, bodily and mental. Healthfulness, 99 

12. These Qualities have a Moral Character only as they are 

connected, or not, with the Sentiment of Benevolence, 99 

CHAPTER IV. 
Definitions of Virtue. 

1. Why all Definitions of Virtue have failed, . 100 

2. Proper Moral Sense of the Term Virtue. What Ac- 

tions are called Disinterested, . . . 101 

3. Definitions of Virtue proposed by the Self-sacrificing 

Moralists, Forensic and Mystic, . . . 101 

4. Stoic Definition of Virtue, .... 102 

5. Definitions proposed by the various Partisans of the 

Selfish Theory, . . . . . 102 

6. Platonic Definition, . . . . .104 

7. Definition proposed by Aristotle and his Followers, 104 

8. Fault common to all these Definitions, . .104 

CHAPTER V. 

Of Moral Obligation, Duty, Rights, Responsibility, 
Merit, Demerit, Punishments, and Rewards. 

1. Introduction, . . . . . 105 

2. Moral Obligation, ..... 105 

3. Difference between Moral or Mental Necessity, and 

Moral Obligation, .... 105 

4. All Actions of all Kinds originate in Mental Necessity, 106 

5. Extent of Moral Obligation in general, . . 107 

6. Measure of its Extent in any given Community, . 107 

7. Its Extent as regards Individual xlctors, . . 107 

8. Duty, Responsibility, .... 108 

9. Right, . . . . . . . . 108 

10. Demerit, ...... 108 

1 1. Disapprobation, Punishment, .... 108 



CONTENTS. XI 

12. Effect of Admiration upon Disapprobation, . 109 

13. Approbation, Merit, ..... 109 

14. Reward, ...... 110 

15. Confusion in which the Mystics have involved this Sub- 

ject, . . . . . . . Ill 

16. Paradoxical Consequences of the Mystic Theory of 

Morals, . . . . . . Ill 

17. Great theological Controversy thence resulting, . 113 

18. First Aspect of that Controversy. Free Will denied to 

Man by the pure Mystics. Consequences, . . 113 

19. Attempts of the Semi-mystics to avoid those Conse- 

quences, . . . . . .115 

20. Second and third Aspects of that Controversy. Three 

great Schools of Theology, . . . 116 

21. First School. Application to Theology of the Selfish 

Theory of Morals, . . . . .117 

22. Second School. Theological Opinions of those who re- 

ject the Selfish Theory without adopting the Theory 
of pure Benevolence, . . . . 1 19 

23. Third School. Application of the Moral Theory of pure 

Benevolence to Theology, . . . . 122 

24. Benefits thence resulting to practical Morals, . 127 

25. Views of the Character of Man entertained by these 

three theological Schools, . . . . 129 

CHAPTER VI. 

Grounds of Moral Judgment as respects individual 
Actions and Actors. 

1 . In Case the Act be apparently beneficial, . 130 

2. In Case the Act be apparently injurious, . .132 

3. Rule according to which Men are commonly pronoun- 

ced Virtuous or Vicious, . . . 132 

4. Bias with Respect to those who are special Causes to 

us of Pleasure or Pain, .... 133 

5. Reason why Men incline to an unfavorable Opinion of 

the Moral Character of others, . . • . 134 

6. That Reason not operative with Respect to the Dead, 

or those highly exalted above us, . . 135 

7. Apparent Inconsistencies thence resulting, . . 135 



Xll CONTENTS. 



PART SECOND. 



SOLUTION OF MORAL PROBLEMS, AND CONCILIATION OF 
ETHICAL CODES. 



CHAPTER i: 

Of Personal Security, and the Rights and Duties rel- 
ative to IT. 

1. Object of this Part, . . . 137 

2. Homicide, ...... 138 

3. Reasons why Death is considered so great an Evil, 138 

4. Light in which Homicide is regarded by some Mystic 

Codes, . . . . . . 140 

5. Paradoxes thence resulting, . . .340 

6. Forensic View of Homicide. Self-defence, . . 141 

7. Homicide to save one's own Life, . . 141 

8. Meritorious Homicide. War, . . . 141 

9. Laws of War, ..... 142 

10. Modern European Code of Forensic Morals, or Law of 

Honor, . . . . . . 142 

11. Duelling, ...... 144 

12. Suicide, . . . . . .144 

13. Tyrannicide, . . . . . 146 

14. Retaliatory Homicides. Origin of the Idea of the Moral 

Obligation of Revenge, . . . . 147 

15. Retaliatory Homicides esteemed permissible and obliga- 

tory, ...... 148 

16. Retaliatory. Homicides esteemed meritorious. Knight- 

errantry, Lynch Law, . . . . 149 

17. Further Observations upon Duelling. Its Mystic Origin, 149 

18. Mitigations of criminal Homicide, . . . 150 

19. Infanticide, . . . . . 151 

20. How Civilization affects Ideas respecting Homicide, 153 

21. Rank and Character of the Party slain, how it affects 

our Judgment respecting the Act. Regicide, . 153 

22. Reasons of the Abhorrence felt for criminal Homicide 

in civilized Countries, .... 154 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

23. Homicides justifiable in a Mystic Point of View. Reli- 

gious Persecutions. Hereticide, . . . 155 

24. Wounds, Blows, Poisons, and other Injuries to the Per- 

son, ...... 156 

25. Restraint, Imprisonment, . . . .157 

26. Compulsion, Slavery, . . . . 157 

27. Threats, ...... 157 

28. Insults, . . . . . . 158 

CHAPTER II. 

Rights of Property. Duties and Crimes correlative 
to those Rights. 

1. What Property is, . . . . . 159 

2. Reason why Violations of Property are esteemed immoral, 159 

3. Cases to which these Reasons do not apply, . 160 

4. Mystic Doctrines as to the Rights of Property, . 160 

5. Influence of the Distribution of Property on Respect for 

the Rights of Property, .... 161 

6. Imperfection of the Laws ; how they diminish Respect 

for the Rights of Property, . . . .162 

7. Property in Men. Slaves, . . . 162 

8. Malevolence the Origin of Slavery, . . . 162 

9. MaJevolence essential to the Continuance of Slavery, 163 

10. Important Difference in this Respect between Property 

in Slaves and other Kinds of Property, . . 164 

11. Different Lights in which Slavery is regarded. Anti- 

Slavery and Pro- Slavery Feeling, . . 164 

12. Mystical Defenders of Slavery, . . . 165 

CHAPTER III. 
Of Promises, Contracts, and Truth in general. 

1. Reason why Breaches of Promise and Violations of 

Truth are esteemed Wrong, . . . 166 

2. Extorted Promises, ..... 166 

3. Promises involving a Violation of the Rights of Third 

Parties, . . . . 166 

b 



XIV CONTENTS. 

4. Obligation to speak the Truth, . . . 166 

5. Cases in which Deception is esteemed permissible, . 167 

6. Cases in which Deception is esteemed a Duty, . 167 

7. Decisions of some Mystic Moralists upon these Points, 167 

8. Similar Decisions by some Forensic Moralists, . 168 

9. Why Truth is so much praised, . . . 168 

10. Detestation of Falsehood not chiefly dependent on the 

Moral Sentiment, ..... 169 

11. Moral Character of simple Falsehood, . . 169 

12. Pain of Inferiority the chief Security for Truth, . 170 

13. Slander, Judicial Falsehood, Fraud, . . 171 
,14. Cheating in Trade, . . . . .171 

15. Unfair Advantages, .... 172 

16. Legal Doctrines respecting Contracts and Frauds, . 172 

CHAPTER IV. 
Political Duties. 

1. Forensic View of Political Duty, . . . 173 

2. Mystic View of Political Duty, . . .174 

3. This View leads to Theocratic Despotism, . 174 

4. Doctrine of the Divine Right of Governors, . . 176 

5. This Doctrine equally applicable to all Forms of Gov- 

ernment, .. . . . . . 177 

6. History of the Doctrine of the Divine Right of Princes 178 

7. Doctrine of the Indefeasible Right of Princes. Theory 

ofHobbes, 180 

8. Theory of Locke and the English Whigs, , 182 

9. Doctrine of Natural Rights, . . . .182 

10. Paradoxes to which that Doctrine has led, . 183 

11. Duties of good Citizenship. Patriotism, Public Spirit, 185 

CHAPTER V. 
Of the unequal Burden or Duty imposed on Women, 

AND HEREIN OF CHASTITY. 

1. Opinion of the Inferiority of Women, . . 186 

2. Position of the Wife in Savage Communities. Polygamy, 186 

3. Origin of Harems, and Female Seclusion, . 187 



CONTENTS. XV 

4. Subordination in the Harem, . . . .188 

5. Distinction between Wives and Concubines, . 188 

6. Substitution of Monogamy for Polygamy. Its Causes 

and Consequences, . 189 

7. Position of Women among the Romans, and in Modern 

Europe, ...... 190 

8. Chastity in Women, ..... 191 

9. Chastity in Men, ..... 193 

10. Grounds of this Distinction, — as regards Women, . 194 

11. As regards Men, ..... 197 

12. Grounds of the Severity exercised towards Women for 

Breaches of Chastity, . . . . 198 

13. Failure of this Severity to accomplish its Object. True 

Means of promoting Chastity, . . . 194 

14. Communities in which Women approach nearest to 

Equality with Men, . . . . 200 

15. Grounds of the Liberty allowed to Married Women in 

such Communities, .... 202 

16* That Liberty not extended to the Unmarried, and why, 204 
17. Position of Women in the Northern States of America. 

Societies for Moral Reform, .... 204 

CHAPTER VI. 
Ascetic Systems of Morals. 

1. Luxury. Definition of it, ... 206 

2. Political Ascetics, ..... 206 

3. Philosophical Ascetics, .... 207 

4. Mystic Ascetics, ..... 209 

5. Mystic Theory of Asceticism, . . . 209 

6. Disciples of this Doctrine in all Ages and Countries, 211 

7. Tendency to an Alliance between Asceticism and Self- 

sacrifice, ...... 211 

8. Mystic Doctrines on the Subject of Chastity, . 212 

9. War of the Poets against the Ascetics, . . 214 
10. Superior Justice towards Women, of Ascetic-mystic 

Morals, ...... 214 



XVI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

Mutual Duties of Relatives, Friends, Inferiors, Su- 
periors, Enemies, and Strangers. 

1. Parents and Children, . . . . 215 

2. Why the Tie of Blood appears less strong in Civilized 

Communities, ..... 216 

3. Other Effects of an enlarged Sphere of the Sentiment 

of Benevolence, . . . , • 217 

4. Duties of Friendship. Their Origin, . . 217 

5. Breaches of the Duty of Friendship, esteemed more 

criminal than Breaches of the Duty of Love, and why, 218 

6. Duties to Superiors, .... 220 

7. Respect due from the Young to the Old, . . 220 

8. Grounds and Measure of the Respect due to those above 

us, ...... 220 

9. Gallantry towards Women. Its Origin and Extent, 221 

10. Duties of Superiors to Inferiors, . . , 221 

11. Remarkable Difference between Codes of Law and 

Codes of Morals as to the Extent of the Right of 
Property, ..... 222 

12. Duty of Munificence, or Liberality, . . . 222 

13. Duty of Charity. Pity, .... 223 

14. Distinction between Pity and Sympathy, . . 224 

15. Women peculiarly susceptible to Pity, . . 225 

16. Almsgiving, ..... . 225 

17. Duty to Enemies. Forgiveness, Candor, or Charity in 

the widest Sense, . . , . 225 

18. Right of making War. Practicability of its Extinguish- 

ment, ...... 227 

19. Duties to Strangers. National Prejudices, . . 228 

20. Piracy and the Slave Trade, ... 229 

21. Hospitality. Duties of a Host, . . .229 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Duties of Sympathy and Self-respect. 

1. Definition of Sympathy, .... 231 

2. Union of Sympathy with Malevolence, . • 231 

3. Virtuous Indignation, so called, . . . 233 



CONTENTS. XVI 1 

4. Cruel Customs thence arising. Torture, Cannibalism, 

Mutilation, . . . - . 233 

5. Political and Religious Cruelties. Hatred of Innovators, 234 

6. Slow Progress of Freedom of Inquiry, . . 235 

7. What are esteemed Duties of Sympathy often in Con- 

tradiction to the Dictates of Benevolence, . 235 f 

8. Effects of Mystic Sympathy, . . . .237 

9. Duties of Self-respect, .... 238 

CHAPTER IX. 
Duties to God, or Religious Duties. 

1. Mystic Idea of God. Consequences thence Resulting, 240 

2. Current Theology modified and determined by current 

Morals, ...... 241 

3. Religious Forms and Ceremonies, . . . 241 

4. Different Images under which God is represented. Cor- 

responding Ideas of Religious Duty, . . 242 

5. Philosophical Idea of God, Controversy between the 

Philosophers and the Mystics, . . . 243 

6. Attempted Alliance between Philosophy and Mysticism. 

Semi -Mystics, ..... 245 

7. This Alliance rejected by the thorough Mystics, . 245 

8. Religious Faith. Different Ideas of it, . • 246 

9. Reasons why Religious Faith has been reckoned a 

Moral Duty, ...... 247 

10. That Opinion on the Decline, . . ^ 249 

11. Vice of Hypocrisy, ..... 249 

12. Want of Faith complained of by recent Moralists. Their 

probable Meaning, ..... 251 

CHAPTER X. 

Morals a progressive Science. 

1. Actions produce Consequences of three Kinds, . 252 

2. Progress of Moral Opinions, .... 252 

3. Upon what subjects Moral Opinions have been most 

uniform, ...... 253 

4. Decisions of Common Sense on Questions of Morals, 254 

c 



XVlll CONTENTS. 



PART THIRD. 



CONNEXION BETWEEN HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE, AND 
MEANS OF PROMOTING BOTH. 



CHAPTER I. 
Connexion between Happiness and Virtue. 

1. Two Aspects of this Question : first, as respects Com- 

munities ; second, as respects Individuals, . 255 

2. Sets of Circumstances upon which Happiness is de- 

pendent, ...... 255 

3. Effect of an Increase of Virtue on the Happiness of a 

Community, . . . . 256 

4. Hence Moralists have been inclined to maintain that 

Individuals are happy in Proportion to their Virtue, 256 

5. Falsity of that Doctrine, .... 257 

6. Nature of the Distinction between the Right and the 

Expedient, ...... 257 

7. Injustice and Danger of supposing Happiness and Vir- 

tue to be inseparable, .... 260 

8. That Doctrine partially true of ordinary Virtue ; not 

true of extraordinary Virtue, . . . 261 

9. True Aim of the enlightened Moralist, . 261 

CHAPTER II. 
Means of raising the Standard of Morals. 

1. By increasing the average Force of the Sentiment of 

Benevolence, . . . . . 263 

2. Development of Moral Character in Children, . 263 

3. Cooperating Motives. Good and Bad Children, . 264 

4. Developement of Moral Character in Youth and Man- 

hood, . . . . .265 

5. Classification of Mankind into Good and Bad, Conscien- 

tious and Unprincipled, . . . . 266 

6. How this Means operates as to individual Actions, . 267 

7. Increase of the average Force of Benevolence a Means 

at once conservative and reformative, . . 267 



CONTENTS. Xix 

8. First Means of increasing the Force of the Sentiment 

of Benevolence, — Exercise, Habit, . . 268 

9. Second Means, — Alleviation of counteracting Pains, 269 

10. Why Civilization is considered favorable to Virtue and 

Happiness. Celebrated Paradox of Rousseau, . 270 

11. Commencement of a great social Revolution, . 271 

12. That Revolution still in Progress, . . 272 



THEORY OF MORALS. 

PART FIRST. 

OF MORAL DISTINCTIONS IN GENERAL. 



CHAPTER I. 

MORAL CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 

1. The distinction between actions morally good 
and morally bad, morally Right and morally Wrong, 
and therefore worthy of approval or worthy of blame, 
perpetually exercises a powerful influence over the 
judgments and the conduct of men. 

2. To discover the nature, in other words, the 
origin or cause of this distinction, or, more correctly, 
the Law according to which it takes place, has been, 
and still is, an object of anxious inquiry among phi- 
losophers ; for no theory satisfactory in all respects 
has yet been proposed. 

3. It is held by one class of moralists, that there is 
an original, eternal, absolute difference, independent 
of the peculiar constitution of man, between Right 
and Wrong ; and men have been supposed to be 
endowed with an innate faculty of perceiving that 
difference, just as through the eye, the touch, and 
the palate, they discern the difference between black 
and white, straight and crooked, hard and soft, sweet 

1 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



and sour. This power of moral discernment has 
by some been ascribed to reason, the faculty, that is, 
by which truth in general is discerned; by others 
it has been ascribed to a supposed faculty* appro- 
priated to the discernment of moral truth in particu- 
lar, called Conscience, or the Moral Sense. It has 
been further supposed, that Right is endowed with a 
certain peculiar beauty or desirableness, which at- 
tracts us to pursue it, and that Wrong carries Avith it 
' a certain deformity or disgustfulness, which repels 
and restrains us. This theory of morals, which we 
may distinguish as the Platonic theory, taught by 
Plato, revived in modern times by Cudworth and 
Clarke, and more recently maintained by Price, 
Kant, Cousin, and Jouffroy, is liable, however, to 
insuperable objections. 

4. In the first place, it seems to be well establish- 
ed, and notwithstanding strenuous efforts lately made 
in favor of the opposite opinion, philosophers are 
more and more inclined to admit, that the knowledge 
of the absolute is not within the, reach of human 
capacity. What men have the power to know is, 
not what things are in themselves absolutely, but 
only what they are relatively to man ; that is, how 
they appear to, and how they affect the human ob- 
server. All we can know is, what men perceive, 
and what men feel. The constitution of our own 
nature, not the absolute constitution of things, is the 
proper object of human research; and only in the 
constitution of man can we find, if we find at all, 
the origin of human opinions and actions. 

5. To escape this objection, and at the same time 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 



to account for the pleasurable and disgustful feelings 
attendant upon the perception of Right and Wrong, 
Shaftesbury and others maintain, that the distinc- 
tion between right and wrong is, in fact, a subjective 
distinction, originating in a peculiar sensibility, to 
which they give the name of Moral Sentiment, by 
means of which we feel certain actions to be right, 
and others to be wrong. 

But whether in its original shape, or thus modified, 
the Platonic theory is liable to the decisive objection, 
that it admits of no practical application ; that it ex- 
plains nothing, being a mere truism, a mere form of 
asserting, what is the very thing to be explained, 
that men do distinguish between Right and Wrong. 
So long and so far as there is a perfect coincidence 
between what is called the reason, conscience, moral 
sense, or moral sentiment of all men, like that which 
exists in the perception of forms, colors, and sounds, 
this theory answers sufficiently well. But it is pre- 
cisely because there are great differences among men 
upon questions of morals, that the nature or law of 
moral distinctions becomes an object of such anxious 
inquiry. What we want is, some test by which to 
distinguish, in cases of dispute, what is Right, and 
what is Wrong. But so long as each man appeals to 
his own particular reason, his own particular con- 
science, his own particular moral sentiment, as the 
ultimate and infallible tribunal, just as he appeals to 
his eye in matters of color, to his sight and touch 
upon questions of form. and. to his ear upon questions 
of sound, no such test does, or can, exist. All con- 
sciences do not agree, like all ears and all eyes. We 



4 THEORY OF MORALS. 

are bewildered amid a multitude of contradictory- 
decisions, all claiming an equal authority ; till at 
length we are driven to doubt, whether what is 
called conscience, or the moral sentiment, is, after 
all, any thing more than education, habit, prejudice, 
inclination, or caprice. 

6. Another theory of morals, which, under different 
forms, has had, and still has, a very extensive cur- 
rency, places the difference between Right and 
Wrong, in the tendency of right actions to promote, 
and of wrong actions to diminish, the happiness of 
the actor. This is called the Selfish theory. 

This theory is not without a certain degree of 
plausibility ; since every man's consciousness will 
inform him, that the performance of actions which 
the ^gent esteems right, is always attended by a 
degree of satisfaction ; while the performance of 
actions which the agent esteems wrong, is always 
attended by a degree of pain. 

7. But when we look closer into the matter, and 
examine that which is called happiness, we find it 
not a simple, but a very complex thing, made up 
of many various, and often hostile, ingredients. 
There are numerous kinds of pleasures besides the 
pleasure of acting rightly ; and numerous kinds of 
pains besides the pain of doing wrong. What is 
called happiness consists in the enjoyment of plea- 
sures of all kinds ; and those who have held that 
happiness and virtue are correlative, have been in- 
evitably driven into one, or the other, of two oppo- 
site paradoxes. They have found themselves obliged 
to maintain, either that the •pleasure of virtue is the 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 5 

only pleasure, or that all pleasures are equally vir- 
tuous. 

8. The Stoics chose the first horn of this dilemma. 
Filled with that admiration of the beauty and dig- 
nity of virtue which they had learned in the school 
of Plato, and led away by a certain affected contempt 
for the ordinary objects of human pursuit, borrowed 
from the Cynics, they went the length of maintain- 
ing, in defiance of the common sense of mankind, 
that bodily pain, hunger, poverty, degradation, dis- 
grace, and a thousand other things, which men uni- 
versally regard as among the greatest of evils, are in 
fact no evils at all, and cannot diminish. the happi- 
ness of a truly virtuous man ; while wealth, authority, 
and the so called gratifications of the senses and the 
appetites have no power whatever of conferring 
pleasure, or of making vicious men happy. 

9. The Epicureans, avoiding this paradox, fell 
into the opposite extreme ; and in equal defiance of 
the common sense of mankind, came to the conclu- 
sion, that the pleasures of virtue and the pains of 
vice are in no respect different from other pleasures 
and other pains. That the man who pleases himself 
with eating a good dinner is quite as virtuous, pro- 
vided his pleasure be as great, as the man who 
pleases himself with doing a good action ; that virtue, 
in fact, consists in making one's self as comfortable as 
possible. 

These paradoxes are so monstrous, that few have 

been induced to defend them in their original form. 

But both the Stoic and the Epicurean doctrines, 
1# 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



slightly modified and disguised, have had, and still 
have, a host of supporters. 

10. The semi-Stoics admit that bodily pain, pov- 
erty, sickness, hunger, nakedness, and degradation 
are certainly evils, and evils which men may reason- 
ably do much to avoid, provided they can avoid 
them without any sacrifice of virtue. But they 
maintain, that, compared with the evil of conscious 
departure from rectitude, all other evils are trifling, 
and do not deserve to be taken into account. In 
like manner it is held, of the gratification of the 
senses and the appetites, wealth, power, superiority, 
and other like objects of human wishes, though, con- 
sidered by themselves, they may be desirable, yet 
that, compared with virtue, they are quite unproduc- 
tive in pleasure. 

This is a doctrine often preached, seldom sincerely 
believed, and still seldomer practised. Indeed it is 
to be observed, that the most zealous advocates of 
this doctrine are generally persons who are in quiet 
habitual possession of those very advantages which 
they affect to depreciate ; advantages which, how- 
ever meanly they may rate them, they show not the 
slightest inclination to resign, There are few Stoics 
among the humble, the sick, or the poor ; and the 
experience of every day may convince us, that those 
pains which this doctrine esteems so inconsiderable, 
often rise to such a pitch as to make men wholly 
regardless of moral distinctions, 

As has been already stated, virtuous conduct is 
doubtless one source of enjoyment, and vicious con- 
duct one source of suffering. Yet it is evident that 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 7 

no definite proportion exists between happiness and 
virtue, vice and misery. A very limited observation 
is enough to show, that persons of great virtue often 
lead very miserable lives ; and that very vicious men 
often enjoy a great amount of pleasure. 

11. The semi-Epicureans, on the other hand, ad- 
mit that there are many actions which may give 
pleasure to the actor, which are not, simply on that 
account, entitled to be considered virtuous ; and 
many actions also, which may give pain to the actor, 
but which do not therefore deserve to be called 
wrong. According to their account, the true distinc- 
tion is this ; — those actions which, on the whole, 
produce a balance of pleasure to the actor, are vir- 
tuous actions ; and those actions which, on the 
whole, produce a balance of pain to the actor, are 
vicious actions.* 

A fatal objection to this statement is to be found 
in the fact, that the very same course of conduct 
often produces to one man a great balance of plea- 
sure, which produces to another man a great balance 
of pain. One man heads an insurrection and so 
rises to wealth, eminence, and glory, and is handed 
down to posterity as a virtuous patriot, the father of 
his country. Another man does the same thing, and 
pines in a prison, or perishes ignobly on the scaffold, 
denounced as a traitor, and the object of universal 
execration. Is success the test of merit and of vir- 



* This appears to have been the opinion of Epicurus himself; first 
revived in modern times by Gassendi. But many of his followers, 
and Hobbes among the rest, went much greater lengths, and consti- 
tute the pure Epicurean school described in the ninth section. 



8 THEORY OF MORALS. 

tue ? In point of fact, in passing a moral judgment 
upon a man's conduct, it frequently happens that the 
ill consequences to himself, the pains, the unhappi- 
ness, the heavy balance of evil, which that conduct 
has brought upon him, and which he knew at the 
time it would bring upon him, render his conduct 
so much the more meritorious in our eyes. 

12. There is indeed so little in the course of hu- 
man life and experience to give support to the doc- 
trine either of the semi-Stoics or the semi-Epicu- 
reans, the doctrine, namely, that virtue and happiness 
are correlative, that the followers of both these 
schools, despite the authority of their original found- 
ers, were compelled to adopt the idea of a future life ; 
in which future life, they allege, all that the virtuous 
suffer here will be more than made up to them, while 
the wicked will exchange their temporary happiness 
for prolonged, if not eternal, misery. 

But, inasmuch as men who have no distinct idea 
of any such future retribution, or who deny it alto- 
gether, do yet distinguish between actions as morally 
good and morally bad, it is sufficiently evident that 
this distinction cannot depend upon any effect of 
actions here to produce pleasure or pain in a life to 
come. Indeed the most zealous advocates for a 
future retribution principally insist upon it, as neces- 
sary to make up for the sufferings of the good and 
the enjoyments of the wicked in this present life ; — 
an argument which would be destitute of force, and 
even of meaning, unless the goodness and the wick- 
edness of actions be something distinct from their 
consequences to the actor. 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 9 

13. Indeed, when we come to look more closely 
into the matter, so far from finding that the peculiar 
characteristic of actions morally right, is their ten- 
dency to promote the pleasure or happiness of the 
actor, either immediate or permanent ; and of actions 
morally wrong to produce either present or future 
pain to the actor ; it is a much more distinguishing 
quality that those actions which we call morally 
good are such as tend to promote the pleasure, either 
immediate or prospective, of some sensitive being 
other than the actor ; while those actions which we 
call morally bad are such as tend to produce pain, 
immediate or prospective, to some sensitive being 
other than the actor. 

14. Before proceeding to follow up this observa- 
tion, certain preliminary distinctions must be pointed 
out ; otherwise we shall become involved, like so 
many other speculators upon morals, in an endless 
labyrinth of verbal ambiguities. 

15. In the first place, it is to be observed, that 
actions are the only original subject-matter of moral 
judgment. By the word action, we must here un- 
derstand, not any event happening by any agency, 
in which broad meaning the word is sometimes 
used, but an event happening by the agency of 
some being having a power of voluntary or sponta- 
neous action. We must even limit the word still 
further, so as to include only the actions of beings 
capable of perceiving beforehand, at least to a certain 
extent, the consequences of their actions ; in other 
words, to the actions of men, or of beings having, or 
supposed to have, an intellectual constitution similar 
to that of man. 



10 THEORY OF MORALS. 

Human actions then are the original subject-mat- 
ter of moral judgment; and other things fall under 
its cognizance merely as they tend, or are supposed 
to tend, to produce human actions of a particular 
kind ; or if the actions of any beings, other than 
men, ever become the subject-matter upon which 
moral judgment is exercised, it is only because those 
beings are supposed to possess a nature, so far as the 
distinction between good and bad actions is con- 
cerned, similar to that of man. 

16. Now an action such as we have here described 
it, to wit, the action of a spontaneous intelligent 
being, is made up of two things quite distinct from 
each other ; namely, the external event resulting, 
and the motive by which the agent was impelled to 
produce that event. 

17. In speaking of actions we use the words right 
and wrong principally with an eye to the external 
event, and with little or no reference to the motive 
of the actor. We use the words virtuous and vicious 
principally with reference to the motive of the actor, 
and with little or no regard to the external event. 
This distinction is clearly traceable in the most ordi- 
nary use of language ; # it is of great importance ; and 
in this treatise it will be strictly adhered to. The 
phrases, morally good and morally bad, are used 
indiscriminately, with respect both to the motive 
and the event ; sometimes with principal reference 
to the one ; sometimes with principal reference to the 

* The epithets right and wrong are confined entirely to actions ; 
the epithets virtuous and vicious are applicable to actors as well as 
to actions. 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 11 

other ; sometimes with equal reference to both. The 
epithets good and bad, and the corresponding sub- 
stantives good and evil, when used alone, without 
the qualifying term, morally, have their significa- 
tion greatly enlarged. The word good is employed 
to describe any thing that gives us pleasure ; the 
words bad and evil, any thing that gives us pain, 
whether a moral pleasure or a moral pain, or a pain 
or pleasure of any other kind. As the qualifying 
epithet morally is frequently dropped, even when 
the signification of these words is restricted to moral 
good and moral evil, an ambiguity thence arises, 
which has led to infinite confusion and mistakes, — - 
an ambiguity which we must carefully avoid. 

18. The word action, it must also be recollected, 
includes not only positive acts, that is, things actu- 
ally done ; but also negative acts, that is, things 
omitted to be done. 

19. After these explanations, we may assert, that 

ALL POSITIVE ACTIONS .CALLED WRONG, are actions 

that produce, or are supposed to produce, or to tend 
to produce, immediately or ultimately, some pain to 
some sensitive being other than the actor ; and that 

ALL NEGATIVE ACTIONS CALLED WRONG, are actions 

that deprive, or tend to deprive, or are thought to do 
so, some sensitive being other than the actor, of some 
pleasure that he would otherwise have enjoyed ; or 
which leave him exposed to some pain, from which, 
had the action been performed, he would have es- 
caped. 

20. Let it here be remarked, once for all, that the 
word pleasure, in its ordinary use, and for the 



12 THEORY OF MORALS. 

sake of brevity, we shall often employ it in the same 
extensive sense, includes not only pleasure prop- 
erly so called, or positive pleasure, but also relief or 
freedom from pain, or negative pleasure ; and that 
the word pain includes not only pain properly so 
called, or positive pain, but also deprivation or dimi- 
nution of pleasure, or negative pain. 

21. All actions that are not wrong, are right ; but 
under the common head of right actions, two classes 
are embraced very distinct in kind. The first class 
includes those actions which are right, but at the 
same time, morally indifferent ; to which class 
belong all those actions, which, however pleasurable 
or painful to the actor himself, produce, or are sup- 
posed to produce, or to tend to produce neither pleas- 
ure nor pain to any sensitive being other than the 
actor. The performance or non-performance of these 
acts has no influence, any way, upon our estimate 
of moral character. On the other hand, those actions 
which produce, or are supposed to produce, or to tend 
to produce pleasure to sensitive beings other than the 
actor, are not only right, but also praiseworthy ; 
and it is by the performance of such actions thai a 
character for virtue is acquired. 

22. Thus it happens that the same external act 
will be classed, as morally Indifferent, as Praise- 
worthy, or as Wrong, according as it is productive, 
or thought likely to be productive, of different re- 
suits. Whether I shall sit or stand, whether I shall 
pick up a stone or throw it down, these acts, so long 
as this is all that appears, are morally indifferent : 
and whether I perform or omit them can have not 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 13 

the slightest influence in determining my moral 
character. But suppose that my standing up be a 
signal which 1 have concerted with hired assassins, 
for the commission of a murder. Suppose that my 
sitting down be to interpose my body between some 
deadly weapon, and the life of my friend. Suppose 
that my picking up a stone be with the intent to 
participate in the martyrdom of some innocent and 
worthy man ; or that my throwing it down indicate 
my refusal to have any share in such a crime, even 
though that refusal expose me to the indignation of 
an infuriated multitude. In these cases, the act, 
before so indifferent, assumes a decided moral char- 
acter, and becomes highly wrong, or highly praise- 
worthy. 

23. After these explanations, we again assert it as 
a general fact, that actions, externally considered, 
and without immediate reference to the motives of 
the actor, are everywhere among men distinguished 
into three great classes, Praiseworthy actions, In- 
different actions, and Wrong actions, — the first 
two classes being ordinarily included together under 
the head of right actions; — and that actions are 
arranged in these three classes, according as they 
produce, or are supposed to produce, or to tend to 
produce, pleasure or pain, or neither, to sensitive 
beings other than the actor. In other words, no 
action is ever prohibited as wrong, in any code of 
morals, except because it is thought to cause some 
pain to some sensitive being other than the actor ; 
and no action is ever enjoined as a duty, except be- 
cause it is thought to produce some pleasure to some 
J 2 



14 THEORY OF MORALS. 

sensitive being other than the actor. And further, 
actions considered in themselves, and without imme- 
diate reference to the motives of the actor, are class- 
ed as more or less praiseworthy in proportion to the 
amount and extent of pleasure which they are sup- 
posed to confer, or to tend to confer, upon sensitive 
beings other than the actor ; and they are pronounced 
more or less wrong, in proportion as the pain to sen- 
sitive beings other than the actor, which they in- 
flict, or are supposed to inflict, or to tend to inflict, is 
greater or less in acuteness, permanence, and extent. 

These allegations are of such great importance, 
and, if founded in fact, afford such a clue towards 
the discovery of the real nature and actual law of 
moral distinctions, that it is necessary to establish 
their truth somewhat in detail. 

24. In all societies of men, the most rude and sav- 
age, as well as the most civilized, there exist sets of 
opinions on the subject of right and wrong actions, 
— that is, as to what actions ought to be performed, 
and what actions ought not to be performed, — 
which sets of opinions, out of analogy to the codes 
of civil law, have been called the moral code, or the 
moral law. Indeed it is the moral code, which 
everywhere furnishes, to a greater or less extent, the 
foundations of the civil code. 

These bodies of opinion, these moral codes, pass 
from generation to generation, sometimes by oral, 
and sometimes by written tradition ; sometimes they 
are handed down for ages almost unchanged ; some- 
times they are gradually and imperceptibly modifi- 
ed; and sometimes they undergo very sudden and 
very violent alterations. 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIOxNS. 15 

When we come to compare these moral codes with 
each other, we find, as in the various codes of civil 
laws, upon some points a perfect coincidence, and 
upon others a general similarity ; while upon other 
points, and those often of the highest importance, we 
observe the most strange, and apparently unaccount- 
able discrepancies ; and sometimes the most positive 
contradictions. 

It is the existence of these discrepancies and con- 
tradictions, it is the disputes which are constantly 
arising in every inquisitive and progressive society, 
upon certain points of the Moral Law, which give its 
chief interest and importance to our present inquiry. 
What are the principles upon which the distinction 
between Right and Wrong depends ? Amid so many 
disputes and contradictions, by what rule shall we 
be guided ? 

The rule above stated, according to which ac- 
tions are classified as Praiseworthy, Indifferent, and 
Wrong, will at once help us, if it be true, to explain 
many of these discrepancies, to reconcile many of 
these contradictions, and to account for many of the 
changes, slight or extensive, slow or sudden, imper- 
ceptible or violent, which moral codes are constantly 
undergoing. There are, indeed, some discrepancies 
and contradictions in these codes, and some changes, 
which are dependent upon other causes, to be point- 
ed out hereafter. 

Not only the term Moral Law, but the greater part 
of the phraseology of morals, has been borrowed 
from legal analogies. Thus certain actions which 
produce pleasure to others, and the abstinence from 



16 THEORY OF MORALS. 

certain actions which produce pain to others, are 
classed under the borrowed term of debts, dues, or 
Duties ; and modern authors, who have reduced the 
moral code to writing, have distinguished these ac- 
tions into three classes, namely, Duties to others, 
Duties to ourselves, and Duties to God. How cer- 
tain acts, beneficial to others, have come to be dis- 
tinguished, in particular, as Duties will be explained 
hereafter. Our present business is, to show, that 
all those acts which have, at any time, been class- 
ed as moral duties, are, in fact, acts productive of 
pleasure, or supposed to be productive of pleasure, to 
some sensitive being or beings other than the actor ; 
and that the supposed possession of this quality of 
producing some pleasure to some sensitive being or 
beings other than the actor is an essential character- 
istic of duty. 

25. With respect to that class of actions included 
under the head of Duties to others, and which are 
generally arranged under the two great divisions of 
Justice and Benevolence, it is obvious, at the first 
glance, that pleasure to others is of the very essence 
of all those actions. 

Why will such an action be unjust ? Because it 
will inflict pain upon some person other than the 
actor. It is impossible to imagine an act of injustice 
without some pain inflicted upon another, including 
under the word pain, the deprivation of pleasures. 
Indeed, injustice may be defined in general terms, 
as the securing of pleasure to ourselves at the ex- 
pense of pain to others. 

Why is such an act benevolent ? Because it con- 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 17 

fers a pleasure upon somebody other than the actor. 
Every benevolent act implies a pleasure or benefit 
conferred. Justice requires us to abstain from in- 
flicting pain, or, if we have inflicted it, to make up 
for it ; benevolence requires us to confer gratuitous, 
positive pleasures. 

26. We proceed next to consider that class of acts 
called Duties to ourselves. They are usually ar- 
ranged under the three heads of Prudence, Tem- 
perance, and Economy. These duties, in most codes 
of morals, hold a very high rank ; so much so, that 
in the English language, what is meant, in common 
parlance, by a moral man, is, a man observant of 
these duties. The duties of this class differ, in one 
obvious and striking particular, from those called 
Duties to others, namely, in not operating directly 
upon others, but only indirectly, by first operating 
upon ourselves. It is for this reason that they are 
arranged in a separate class. But the effect of these 
actions, upon the welfare of others, is not, on that 
account, any the less certain or important, or any 
less the reason why they are distinguished as duties. 

27. Prudence, Temperance, and Economy are 
essentia] to place a man in such a position, as will 
enable him to confer pleasures upon others ; while 
Imprudence, Intemperance, and want of Economy 
lead, of necessity, to the infliction of the severest 
injuries upon others. No man stands alone. Every 
man is surrounded, to a greater or less extent, by 
those whose welfare is more or less dependent upon 
him ; and in this way it becomes a duty to others, 
to take care of ourselves ; to keep ourselves in a posi- 

2* 



18 THEORY OF MORALS. 

tion which will preserve us from inflicting pains, and 
will enable us to confer benefits. 

28. What are called acts of imprudence, are, in 
general, acts which result in some loss or suffering 
to the actor ; which loss and suffering the actor fore- 
saw, or might have foreseen. But no such act is 
ever condemned as morally wrong, unless the loss or 
suffering of the actor overflows, and embitters the 
cup of some other person, or seems likely to do so. 
It is in this alone that the moral wrongfulness of 
imprudence consists ; and, therefore, whether we 
shall condemn a man or not, as guilty of impru- 
dence, depends entirely upon circumstances. Many 
acts are reckoned imprudent in a poor man, which 
would not be considered so in a rich man ; in a 
weak man, which would not be so in a strong man ; 
in the father of a family dependent upon him for 
support, which would not be so in a person without 
incumbrances ; and so in many other instances. 

29. The three chief breaches of the virtue of tem- 
perance, are gluttony, intoxication, and excessive 
sexual indulgence. The moral wrongfulness of these 
acts does not consist, as the Epicureans allege, in the 
pains which they are likely to produce to the actor, 
but in the pains which they may probably cause 
him to inflict upon others. All these indulgences, 
when excessive, tend to destroy the muscular and 
mental faculties ; and thus to deprive us of the 
power of conferring benefits upon others. They 
tend also to weaken or destroy the force of those 
motives by which we are restrained from inflicting 
pain, and are impelled to confer pleasure, and thus 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 19 

to take from us not only the power, but also the dis- 
position, to confer benefits upon others. It is for this 
reason that they have been denounced by the mor- 
alists of every age ; though great differences of opin- 
ion have existed, and still exist, as to the particular 
acts which deserve to be stigmatized with the re- 
proach of intemperance. Much depends, in this case, 
as in the case of imprudences, upon the particular 
position of the actor. 

30. Thus it would be' a gluttonous and immoral 
act, for a poor man, whose children depended upon 
his daily wages for bread, to indulge himself, though 
it were once a year, in viands of which a rich man 
may partake every day, without reproach ; and the 
reason is, that the poor man is not able thus to indulge 
himself, except by depriving his children of their 
needed bread ; while the indulgence of the rich man 
inflicts no evil, at least no obvious ascertainable evil, 
upon anybody. 

31. As regards intoxication, whether produced by 
alcohol, by opium, or in any other way, if the pleas- 
ures and the pains, to which that indulgence gives 
rise, terminated with the individual, there would be 
no more moral guilt in it, than there is in the indul- 
gence of a taste for music or poetry. But, not only 
does intoxication, while it lasts, disorder the under- 
standing, destroy the sense of right and wrong, and 
render man a wild and dangerous animal, incapable 
of self-control, and, therefore, liable to inflict indefi- 
nite injuries upon others; but, if it become habitual, 
it is liable to occasion a general incapacity, to make 
its victim a burden to his friends, and a scourge, to 



20 THEORY OF MORALS. 

society. Even the habitual use of intoxicating 
drinks, as it tends directly to the formation of habits 
of drunkenness, has come, and not without reason, 
to be regarded by many as an immoral act. 

32. As to excessive sexual indulgence, what is in 
general so considered can hardly take place without 
the direct infliction of positive injury upon others. 
This injury, it is true, is oftener mental than physi- 
cal ; an injury to the feelings oftener than an exter- 
nal, visible injury ; but it is not on that account any 
the less real. He who violates the marriage bed, 
inflicts an injury upon the husband, which has been 
reckoned, in all times and countries, among the most 
unpardonable. He who seduces a girl, besides the 
injury that he does her by diminishing her chances 
of marriage, and, in many countries, ruining her 
character, and so at once destroying her self-respect, 
and depriving her, it may be, of all honest means of 
support, — inflicts, at the same time, an injury upon 
her parents and friends, who share her disgrace and 
her sufferings ; and upon whom, perhaps, he imposes 
the burden of supporting her illegitimate offspring. 

The consent of the parties liable to suffer evidently 
does away with this wrong ; and it has accordingly 
been held and is held, in many countries, that the 
consent of the husband or the father renders inno- 
cent the act of intercourse with the wife or daughter. 
Such was the opinion of the Romans, who were 
accustomed to lend their wives to their friends. 
Elsewhere this opinion has not prevailed ; the chas- 
tity of woman having been judged of such serious 
importance to domestic happiness, that any infraction 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 21 

of it is regarded as an evil, inflicted upon the com- 
munity at large, even though the parties more imme- 
diately concerned may have purged the injury to 
themselves, by giving their consent. Perhaps, how- 
ever, there is no point of morals upon which greater 
diversities of opinion have existed, than upon the 
merits of chastity, and the extent to which it is a 
moral duty. We shall find occasion, in the Second 
Part, to point out more particularly the origin of 
these diversities, 

33. With regard to economy, that is a virtue 
which consists in restraining our expenses within the 
limits of our income. It is perfectly evident that 
we cannot transgress those limits without inflicting 
injuries upon others. Our own means being ex- 
hausted, as without economy they soon will be, 
extravagance can only be indulged by rurmiijg in 
debt, by a system of sponging, swindling falsehood, 
and fraud, not less injurious to those who are the 
objects of it than downright robbery. And perhaps 
we may be driven even to that ; for it is in want, 
produced by extravagance, that almost all offences 
against property originate. It is in these facts that 
we may discover the origin of that moral disapproba- 
tion, with which want of economy, described under 
the various terms of waste, profusion, extravagance, 
dissipation, is so generally regarded, and of the ob- 
loquy attendant upon the character of a spendthrift. 

34. We come now to that very remarkable class 
of actions which have been denominated duties to 
God. 

As human knowledge is limited by the extent of 



22 THEORY OF MORALS. 

human experience, it universally happens, when the 
cause, or origin, or law of any operation is unknown, 
that an attempt is made to explain it by something 
that is known. Thus we find in ourselves, and in 
other animals, a certain power of spontaneous or 
voluntary action, from which originate many of the 
changes that take place about us. But there are 
many other changes, such as the vicissitudes of the 
seasons, the growth, perfection, and decay of vege- 
tables, and a multitude of others, which are the 
sources to us of many pains and many pleasures, which 
evidently do not arise from the spontaneity either of 
men or of animals. With respect to these latter 
changes, the origin of which is not apparent, man- 
kind have almost universally been led, by a process 
of analogical reasoning, to ascribe them to the spon- 
taneity of certain agents, supposed to resemble man 
in many particulars, but invisible, intangible, immor- 
tal, and possessing powers or capacities altogether 
superhuman. These agents are, of necessity, sup- 
posed to be invisible and intangible, since they are 
neither seen nor felt. The idea of their immortality 
originates in the permanency of those operations, 
which are supposed to be their acts ; and the notion 
of their superhuman power in the superhuman char- 
acter of those supposed acts. 

Thus it has happened that the unknown causes of 
all the operations of nature have been personified, 
and all the complex results of the laws of inani- 
mate existence explained as the voluntary actions 
of certain supernatural, spiritual beings. It is this 
popular and current explanation of the phenomena 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 23 

of nature, which, in this treatise, we denominate the 
Mystical Hypothesis. 

The analogies in which this hypothesis originates 
have been pushed still further, and all the feelings and 
attributes of man have been ascribed to these sup- 
posed invisible beings ; and as there are good and 
bad men, so there have been supposed to be good 
and bad spirits. It has even been supposed that these 
spiritual beings possess the form of men or animals, 
and that they have the power of occasionally render- 
ing themselves visible to human sight; an idea which 
easily originated in certain optical illusions. The 
sense of touch is not so readily deceived ; and spirits, 
though often seen, have been seldom, if ever, felt. 
This assimilation of the spiritual to the sensible has 
been carried further yet. The gods, like men, have 
been supposed to have a birth and history ; certain 
gods have been supposed to become men, or at least 
to appear, and act on earth in a human shape ; and 
by an easy transition, certain men have been sup- 
posed to become gods ; and mythologies have thus 
been multiplied to an almost infinite extent. 

35. It is in this supposed nature of the gods, con- 
structed after the analogy of human nature, that all 
acts of religious worship have originated. The gods 
have been supposed capable of being influenced 
precisely in the same way in which men are in- 
fluenced. All those methods by which the favor 
and good will of men may be secured, have been 
imagined to be equally available with the gods. 

Prayer, supplication, and even reproaches are a 
powerful means of working upon the feelings of men, 



24 THEORY OF MORALS. 

exciting their sympathies in our behalf; and the 
same means have been supposed equally efficacious 
with the gods. 

Gifts are a great means of securing human favor ; 
and gifts to pious uses, whether in the shape of sacri- 
fices, the erection of temples, or other appropriations 
of property thought to be agreeable to the gods, have 
everywhere attained the character of religious acts. 

Processions, ceremonies, feasts, festivals, and the 
erection of monuments and statues are usual means 
of doing honor to men ; the same sorts of honor have 
been supposed to be agreeable also to the gods. 

We may prove our devotion to men, and so gain 
their favor, by submitting to pains and privations in 
order to give them pleasure. Thus fasts, scourgings, 
various bodily torments, and abstinence from many 
pleasures have obtained the character of religious 
acts, under the idea that these things are pleasing to 
the gods. 

To believe a man, against the testimony of our 
own senses and reason, is a high compliment. Hence 
the merit ascribed by theologians to implicit faith. 

36. As all the operations of nature have been 
imagined to originate in the volition of some deity, 
it naturally has happened that the same analogical 
method of reasoning has caused these natural events 
to be construed into marks of divine approbation, or 
of divine displeasure. Thus, seasonable showers, 
plentiful harvests, success in war, and public pros- 
perity in general have been esteemed marks of di- 
vine favor; while droughts, famines, earthquakes, 
hurricanes, pestilences, defeats, and misfortunes in 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 25 

general, have been ascribed to the displeasure of 
some deity. The gods, moreover, by analogy to the 
conduct of human princes, have been imagined not 
to be very discriminating in their wrath ; but to visit 
a whole community with calamities, because their 
displeasure has been excited by the acts of one, or a 
few.* 

It is hence easy to discern how the worship of the 
gods, that is to say, the performance of certain acts 
thought likely to secure their favor and to avert their 
indignation, acquired the character of moral duties- 
They acquired that character not by reason of any 
individual benefits they were supposed to produce to 
him who performed them ; but because they were 
thought an essential means of preserving the com- 
munity in general against the injurious anger of the 
gods. Hence, just as public prosperity and calamity 
have ceased to be ascribed to special divine inter- 
ferences, the performance of religious acts has ceased 
to be ranked among moral duties. 

37. There is, however, another point of view, 
from which this subject may be considered, and 
which is of the greatest importance, since it has 
afforded a foundation for a theory of morals of very 



* Thus, the pestilence that raged in the Grecian camp, commemo- 
rated at the beginning of the Iliad, originated in the refusal of Aga- 
memnon to give up the daughter of a priest of Apollo, whose wrongs 
that god revenged upon the whole Greek army. Or, to cite a more 
recent instance, the celebrated Salem witchcraft in 1692 — the last of 
the witchcrafts, at least on a large scale — was supposed by some of 
the most learned theologians of that day, to be sent as a punishment 
for the sin committed by some foppish young men and women, in, 
wearing lace and love-locks. 

3 



26 THEORY OF MORALS 

extensive currency, and will help us to an explana- 
tion of several of the most remarkable anomalies and 
discrepancies in systems of practical morality. 

The tendency towards simplification, the anology 
of human societies, particularly in the East, where 
the supreme power over great districts was generally 
lodged in a single chief; and the gradual advance of 
men from gross ignorance and credulity, to a certain 
degree of knowledge and of skepticism, led to the 
gradual abandonment and repudiation of the numer- 
ous deities of the old mythologies, and to the con- 
centration of all the divine power and attributes in 
a single being, the sole God, the supreme Deity, 
who might indeed have numerous inferior, invisible 
agents, but who was, in fact, the prime mover and 
original cause of all things. 

This deity, however, was still supposed to be a 
person; and though men ceased to represent him 
under a bodily shape, and with human members ; 
though many of the adherents of this new form of 
spiritualism were violent iconoclasts ; it is not the 
less true that they still made God after their own 
image ; for he was still supposed to possess a nature 
modelled after the nature of man ; leaving out cer- 
tain parts, Avhich appeared less worthy of admi- 
ration, and exaggerating others to an infinite de- 
gree. In particular, he was still supposed to be like 
man, accessible to pain and pleasure ; arid certain 
acts of men were still supposed able to give him 
pleasure and to give him pain. 

It will be shown in another part of this treatise, 
that such a being, with those who have a present, 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 27 

continuous, and practical belief in his existence, is 
calculated to engross the whole of the moral affec- 
tions, to such an extent, that his pains and pleasures 
become the only pains and pleasures — not their own 
— which seem worthy of the slightest attention, or 
at all entitled to influence conduct. 

38. This idea of the nature of God led to a theory 
of morals which may be distinguished as the Mysti- 
cal Theory ; and the various systems of practical 
morals, founded upon that theory, may be called 
Mystical Systems, or systems of mystical morality ; 
systems which, variously modified, are spread over 
all the world ; and which have exercised, and still 
continue to exercise, an extensive influence. 

In the systems of Mystical morals, as in the vari- 
ous systems of Forensic morals, — for we may em- 
ploy that term by way of distinction, — the difference 
between praiseworthy, indifferent, and wrong actions, 
still depends upon the principle above laid down, to 
wit, their tendency to produce pain, or pleasure, or 
neither, to some sensitive being other than the actor. 
But while, in all Forensic systems of morals, those 
other beings are men, or occasionally animals, in 
Mystical systems of morals, it is the pain or pleasure 
of the deity, by which the moral character of actions 
is tested. Such an act is praiseworthy because it 
pleases God ; in other words, because it gives God 
pleasure ; such an act is wrong, because it is dis- 
pleasing to God ; in other words, because it gives 
God pain ; such an act is indifferent, because it does 
not affect God in any way. 

39. The Mystical theory, however, when it is 



28 THEORY OF MORALS. 

made the foundation of practical morals, is usually 
amalgamated with the Selfish theory ; that is, with 
the theory, that virtue consists in securing our own 
greatest happiness. This amalgamation easily takes 
place ; for since, according to the mystics, every 
thing depends upon the volition of God ; and as 
God is supposed to act, at least to a certain extent, 
as men act, and, like them, to be influenced by 
feelings of gratitude ; hence, those who please God 
will certainly be rewarded by him in the end ; and 
those who displease him will be punished. But as 
this present life does by no means exhibit any such 
rewards and punishments, mysticism has been led to 
adopt the hypothesis of a future retribution ; a doc- 
trine, as we have seen, which the semi-Stoics, and 
the semi-Epicureans have also found themselves 
obliged to adopt, as the only means of giving any 
plausibility to their idea of the coincidence of virtue 
and happiness. 

40. The fact, that actions, to be approved, must 
have a tendency to promote happiness, and that no 
action acquires the character of being wrong except 
by reason of some pain that it inflicts, or tends to 
inflict, has been so far perceived, as to have been 
made the foundation of a theory of morals, according 
to which virtuous actions are neither more nor less 
than useful actions ; meaning, by useful actions, 
actions which tend to produce pleasure, or to prevent 
pain. 

41. But this theory involves two fatal defects. In 
the first place, it does not accurately distinguish 
between actions useful to others, and actions useful 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 29 

to ourselves ; a distinction upon which the whole of 
morality depends. In the second place, it forgets 
that an action, to be a subject of moral judgment, 
implies not only an external event, but a design to 
produce that event, and certain feelings or motives 
impelling to the formation and execution of that 
design. It is very true, that whether an action shall 
be esteemed praiseworthy or not, — considered gen- 
erally, and without reference to the motives of the 
actor, — depends upon its utility, or supposed utility, 
to persons other than the actor, and the degree of 
that utility ; but whether or not any particular action 
shall be pronounced virtuous, — the use of which 
appellation includes a reference to the actor, — de- 
pends upon the actor's motives and intentions. It is 
not enough, that an action be, in fact, useful to 
others : in order to make it virtuous, that utility to 
others must have been perceived and intended ; nay, 
more, it must have been a leading object in the per- 
formance of the action.* 

* The Theory of Utility was first suggested in Hume's Treatise 
upon Morals, in which he shows that all actions and qualities called 
virtuous, are useful, or agreeable, — words which have subsequently 
been used as synonymous, — either to others or to ourselves. To- 
wards the conclusion of the same treatise, he also suggests the ideas, 
more fully developed by Helvetius, and known as the doctrine of In- 
terest well understood. 

It is Bentham, however, who has expanded the theory of util- 
ity, and given it celebrity. He sets out with the assumption, that it 
is utility to ourselves, (substantially the doctrine of interest well un- 
derstood, the doctrine of Hobbes, and of the Epicureans,) which is 
the test of right and wrong actions; that is, he assumes the funda- 
mental principle of the selfish theory. But in his system of practical 
morals, what he actually makes the test of right and wrong is, not 
particular or individujJ^gWity, utility to self, but general utility, 

3* 



* 



30 THEORY OF MORALS. 

42. But here we are met by a very serious objec- 
tion. All the partisans of the Selfish theory of 
morals, whether Stoics, Epicureans, semi-Stoics, 
semi-Epicureans, Mystics, or Utilitarians, unite to 
assure us, that the only conceivable motive to act, 
which a man can have, is the promotion of his own 
happiness. Whence it is argued, that mere utility 
to others never can be the primary motive to the 
performance of any action. This doctrine, as to the 
origin of human action, lies at the bottom of the Self- 
ish theory, in all its forms ; and, indeed, first pro- 
duced that theory, the rise and progress of which we 
proceed to trace. 

A very cursory observation of mankind, and a 
very slight degree of attention to the motives of our 
own conduct, are sufficient to lead to the discovery, 
thcK human action consists in the pursuit of pleasures 
and the avoidance of pains. This pursuit of pleas- 

which differs only by an infinitesimal quantity, from utility to others ; 
private or personal utility forming but an imperceptible element of 
general utility. He assumes that the greatest happiness of the great- 
est number will always be coincident with individual happiness ; 
which is, in point of fact, the same assumption made by the semi- 
Stoics, and the semi-Epicureans, when they tell us that virtue and 
happiness are identical; an assumption which all human experience 
contradicts. 

Notwithstanding these defects in his theory, no man has contributed 
more than Bentham to advance the science of morals, of which, as 
will subsequently appear, the science of Utility is a most important 
branch. His Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation 
contains a complete and beautiful development of that science. See, 
also, for a more easy and agreeable explanation of the doctrines of 
Bentham, Traites de Legislation, compiled from Bentham's publica- 
tions and manuscripts, by Dumont, the two first volumes of which 
have been translated into English, by the author of this treatise, and 
published under the title of Theory of Lef 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 31 . 

ures, and avoidance of pains, have been jumbled 
together under the single phrase of the pursuit of 
happiness. The impulse, whence this pursuit of 
happiness has been supposed to arise, has been has- 
tily imagined to be a single impulse, and has been 
denominated Self -inter est or Selfishness. 

Now, as in human contrivances, we determine, in 
general, the end intended to be accomplished, by 
what actually is accomplished ; determining, for in- 
stance, that a watch is intended to measure time 
because it does measure time ; so the same reasoning 
has been analogically applied to natural objects ; and 
it has been concluded that man was intended to 
pursue his own happiness because he does pursue his 
own happiness. Thus it came to be laid down by 
most of the Greek philosophers, as a fundamental 
principle, that the pursuit of happiness is the great 
end of human existence. It must be right, it was 
argued, and coincident with morality, for man to 
fulfil the end of his being. But as the end of human 
existence is happiness, and as all acknowledge that 
men ought to live virtuously, and as virtue is essen- 
tial to the welfare of society, therefore virtue and 
happiness must be identical. 

43. The mystics, who regard the universe as the 
handiwork of a personal deity, which deity they 
frame for themselves after their own image, have for 
the most part applied these same notions as to the 
motives of human action, to explain the conduct of 
the deity. It is absurd, they say, to suppose the 
deity to act from any other motive than the promo- 
tion of his own happiness. He has made all things, 



32 THEORY OF MORALS. 

and all things exist only by his will. Of course they 
must exist only for his pleasure. 

44. The mystics are thus led to a conclusion very 
different from that of the forensic philosophy. So 
far from holding that the chief end of man is the 
promotion of his own happiness, they hold that man's 
sole end is to please God. In this way, human hap- 
piness, in the estimation of most mystical schools, 
becomes a thing of too little value to be taken into 
account ; and if God's pleasure, according to their 
idea of it, be promoted thereby, they look upon the 
damnation of endless millions with unruffled com- 
posure. The most consistent and unflinching hold, 
indeed, that to please God we ought joyfully to con- 
sent to our own damnation. 

45. But as this is a pitch of self-devotion from 
which human nature recoils, and to which none but 
the most ecstatic can attain, an alliance has been 
struck up with forensic philosophy, whence have 
originated various schools of semi-mystics, who have 
laboriously endeavoured to reconcile the two ends of 
the pleasure of God and the happiness of man. This 
object they endeavour to accomplish by insisting, that 
as men universally pursue their own happiness, the 
deity, their creator, must have intended them to 
pursue it ; and that, in pursuing it, they do his will 
and please him. In this way some of them, such as 
Paley, have slided imperceptibly into almost a pure 
Epicureanism ; while others, like Oudworth, and, in 
our day, Kant and Cousin — if indeed their mysticism 
be any thing more than verbal — alarmed at this ap- 
proach toward Epicureanism, have receded almost to 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 33 

a pure Platonism ; setting up virtue as something 
superior to God, a relation, an idea, which he did not 
create, and cannot control, but which exists inde- 
pendently of him, and controls him ; thus, in fact, 
abandoning the fundamental doctrine of mysticism, 
which explains every thing as the act or work of a 
personal deity. 

46. Assuming that the pursuit of happiness is the 
only impulse of human action ; supposing that im- 
pulse to be single and uncompounded j and giving to 
it the name of Self-love, Self-interest, or Selfishness ; 
it certainly follows logically enough, as the ancient 
Epicureans contended, and as Hobbes maintained, 
that Self-interest is the only possible motive of hu- 
man action ; and that to suppose actions to originate 
in a mere desire to promote the pleasure of others — 
a characteristic which we have pointed out as essen- 
tial to virtuous actions — is to suppose what is in- 
compatible with human nature. 

Investigation, however, will show that this con- 
clusion, though logically right, is scientifically false ; 
the assumed premises upon which it is founded not 
corresponding with the facts of human action ; and 
the term Self-love, or Selfishness, being frequently 
used in a double sense, which produces a sad con- 
fusion of ideas. 

47. When we come to look narrowly into the 
springs of human action, we shall find, as Locke did, 
that all human actions originate in pains.* Pains 

* See the Essay on the Human Understanding, Book II. Chap. xxi. 
Sect. 31 et seq. No part of that celebrated work exhibits a keener 
spirit of observation. The leading ideas, as is usual with Locke, had 
been partially anticipated by Hobbes. See the Leviathan, Part I. ch. 6. 



34 THEORY OF MORALS. 

are the perpetual spurs which, from the cradle to the 
grave, urge men to act. Pleasures, of whatever kind, 
while actually in fruition, have not the slightest 
tendency to produce action ; whence it was well 
argued by the Epicureans, that if the gods enjoyed, 
as it was said they did, an existence of perpetual 
bliss, it was absurd to suppose them to interfere in 
the affairs of men; since, being perpetually and com- 
pletely happy, they must be destitute of any motives 
to act. This coincidence between pleasure and re- 
pose has even led many philosophers to suppose them 
identical. Pleasures become motives of action only 
secondarily ; that is, when the contemplation of 
them produces in us that peculiar sort of pains, called 
desires ; a sort of pains which frequently rise to the 
very highest pitch of which human nature is capa- 
ble ] for it is to be observed, that both pleasures and 
pains have a certain limit, beyond which they can- 
not be carried without putting an end to life. 

48. By the word, happiness, as employed in the 
schools, has been signified an ideal state of continu- 
ous pleasure, supposed to be the end of human exist- 
ence and effort, and the impulse to human action. 
But happiness, in this scholastic sense of the 
word, and as distinguished from what are called 
fleeting or temporary pleasures, is purely an imagin- 
ary state, which never entered into the minds of the 
vastly greater number of human beings, whose 
thoughts are almost entirely limited to the present 
hour, or the present day ; and which could not ac- 
tually be enjoyed without a total revolution in the 
nature and constitution of man; a revolution which 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 35 

would change him from an active, into a merely pas- 
sive, contemplative being ; a revolution inconsistent 
with his whole perceptive and sensitive nature — a 
nature in which perceptions and emotions are indis- 
solubly commingled. This scholastic sense of the 
word led several Oriental sects to hold, that happiness 
is a state of pure contemplation ; and to teach that 
those who aspire to be happy, ought not to allow 
themselves to be affected by any thing, — a doc- 
trine, indeed, which was not unknown to the Stoic 
philosophy of the Greeks ; # while other Oriental 
schools, more mystically inclined, have placed hap- 
piness in absorption into' the deity ; and others yet, 
conscious of its inconsistency with human nature as 
at present existing, have held happiness to be sy- 
nonymous with annihilation.! 

49. Happiness, in any sense in which it is practi- 
cally an object of human pursuit, consists merely in 
the avoidance of, or escape from, present pains, 
whether those pains be pains commonly so called, or 
that great class of pains usually designated as de- 
sires ; and it may be safely alleged, that nonaction, 
from the most trivial up to the most important, is 
ever performed, of which some present pain, either a 
simple pain, or a pain of desire, is not the immediate 
motive. 

* tl Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici, 

Solaque, quae possit facere et servare beatum," etc. 

Horat. Epist. I. VI. v. 1, 2. 
t Hobbes was well aware of the futility of this scholastic notion 
of happiness, and briefly but ably exposed it. See Leviathan, Part I. 
ch. 11. This opinion, however, still keeps its ground, and figures 
conspcuously in almost all popular discussions on moral questions. 



36 THEORY OF MORALS. 

Indeed it is obvious, that pleasures, even should 
we suppose them to possess in themselves a power of 
impulse, could operate only to a very trifling extent 
as motives of action ; since for the most part, they 
are of very transitory existence, indeed scarcely more 
than momentary ; while pains frequently last us a 
whoLe lifetime, with hardly any intermission, at least 
during waking hours. 

50. While a vast deal of labor, though, for the 
most part, to little purpose, has been expended in 
investigating what is called the Intellectual nature 
of man, that is, Reason cooperative with the 'senses 
and the conceptive faculty ; pleasures and pains, or 
what is called man's Sensitive nature, have been 
strangely neglected.* And yet the perceptive and 
sensitive natures of man are not, as so many philos- 
phers have supposed, two distinct natures, but insep- 
arable parts of the same nature. They may be con- 
ceived of as distinct, as parts ; but as they exist they 
form together a single indissoluble whole. Accord- 
ing to our experience, Perception and Emotion con- 
stitute one continuous process, in which sometimes 
the one, and sometimes the other, apparently takes 
the lead, but in the completion of which, both are 
uniformly present. We may, perhaps, form an idea 
of a being that perceives and does not feel ; or who 
perceives at one time and feels at another ; but man 
is not such a being ; and all reasoners who pro- 
ceed upon a supposition of that sort, have involved 

* In his Essay, Locke bestows one chapter of about four pages upon 
that subject ; and in this respect followed the example of preceding 
writers, as most subsequent writers have followed his. 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 37 

themselves, and always will involve themselves, in 
endless contradictions. 

51. The following list of simple Pleasures and 
Pains is here submitted as absolutely essential to 
our present purpose. Some of the heads, it should 
be noticed, embrace a great variety of particulars. 

1. Pains of Hunger, 

2. " Thirst, 

3. " Wounds, or disorganization of bodily members, 

4. fl Diseases, or mal- performance of vital functions, 

5. Pleasures and Pains of Muscular Activity, 

6. " " Mental Activity, 

7. " " Heat and Cold, 

8. " " Contact, 

9. " " Flavor, or Taste, 

10. " « Odor, 

11. " " Sound, 

12. " " Color, 

13. " " Form, 

14. " " the Sexual Sentiment, 

15. " " Self-Comparison, or pleasures of supe- 

riority, and pains of inferiority, 

16. " " Benevolence, 

17. " " Malevolence, 

18. " u Recollection, 

19. M M Anticipation, or Hopes and Fears, 

20. u u Disappointment, 

21. Pleasures of Wonder, or Admiration, 

22. " the Ludicrous. 

In common phraseology, the sensibility to some 
of these pleasures and pains, and the desires grow- 
ing out of that sensibility, are confounded together, 
under the epithet of Appetites ; the sensibility to 
some others is called Sentiment, or, when arous- 
ed and active, Passion. Various modifications and 
combinations of these sensibilities are distinguished 
in all languages by numerous names ; while some of 
4 



38 THEORY OF MORALS. 

them in their uncompounded state, even some of the 
most important and influential, have hitherto received 
no names at all in any language. 

The philosophers who have adverted to this sub- 
ject have very much followed whatever empirical 
classification they found established in their mother 
tongues. They have even fallen into the error of 
supposing that whatever is commonly designated 
by a single name, must be a simple, uncompound- 
ed, original emotion. They have not known, or 
have neglected, the important fact, that ordinary 
language has been constructed not scientifically, nor 
for purposes of science, but according to first appear- 
ances, and for ordinary use. Thus we have the 
phrases, moral sentiment, taste, love of power, love 
of money, love of fame, love of knowledge, fear of 
pain, love of novelty, indicating certain combina- 
tions or modifications of the simple sensibilities above 
enumerated, such as most usually present themselves 
in actual life, but not founded upon any scientific 
analysis or accurate classification. Speculative in- 
quirers upon this, as upon other subjects, have in- 
volved themselves in serious errors by imagining 
that the first inventors of names were profoundly 
versed in all sciences, and had established a scien- 
tific nomenclature ; whereas language in its origin 
is trivial and vague; it is only by long use and 
slow degrees that it approaches towards accuracy ; 
before it can be safely used for scientific inquiries, it 
must be rectified and remodelled.* 



* Benthara seems to have been the first who felt the necessity — if 
we wish to attain any accurate knowledge of the Laws of human 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 39 

52. Motives of human action may be arranged 
under the two classes of Pains commonly so called, 
or Simple Pains, and Pains of Desire. Simple pains 
have no reference to any pleasure either past or to 
come ; and men might still be capable of them 
though no such thing as pleasure existed. Pains of 
desire, on the other hand, originate in some pleasure 
past or anticipated ; and men are only capable of 
those pains because they are capable or have been 
capable of the corresponding pleasures. 

53. Of the various simple pains, desires, and pleas- 
ures of which men are capable, it is possible for sev- 
eral simple pains, or several desires, or several pleas- 
ures, or for several simple pains, several desires and 
several pleasures to be felt together at the same 
moment. Any pleasure coexisting with any pain, 
whether a simple pain or a pain of 7 desire, tends, in 
proportion to the keenness of the pleasure, to diminish 
the force of that pain as a motive of action ; and 
pains, coexisting together, impel to action sometimes 
in the same, and sometimes in contrary directions; 
for the same action that may tend to relieve one 
pain may tend to aggravate or to produce another. 

54. The contemplation of a future pain, as prob- 
able or certain, produces a present pain, which may 
be called a pain of Anticipation. These pains are 

action — of investigating and enumerating the kinds of pains and 
pleasures. He has given, in his Introduction to the Principles of Mor- 
als and Legislation, a list of simple pleasures and simple pains. Many, 
however, which he has classed as such are very complex. So far as 
Legislation is concerned, that is, for the purpose to which he applied 
it, that list might answer sufficiently well ; but in a general point of 
view it is very defective. 



40 THEORY OF MORALS. 

what are commonly called Fears. The contempla- 
tion of a future pleasure as probable, or as within 
our power, produces a present pleasure, which may 
be called a pleasure of Anticipation. These pleas- 
ures are commonly called Hopes. They are never 
quite unmixed, being uniformly attended, in a greater 
or less degree, by pains of desire, pains of doubt, and 
pains of fear. # 

Desire hardly exists at all, and never exists long, 
or with any degree of force, without hope. The 
pleasure of that attendant hope has frequently been 
mistaken for a pleasure of desire ; whereas desire in 
itself, as has been already stated, is always a pure 
pain. The coexistent pleasure always depends upon 
the coexistent hope, and the degree of it. When 
hope ceases, desire shows what it is, in its own na- 
ture and separate from hope, under the black form 
of Despair. 

The pains of fear and the pains of desire attend- 
ant upon hope, are powerful motives of action ; and, 
indeed, are the sole impulses to those combined and 
prolonged systems of action which we observe among 
men, and especially civilized and contemplative men. 

* " Her younger sister, that Speranza hight, 

Was clad in blue that her beseemed well ; 

Not all so cheerful seemed she of sight 

As was her sister ; t ichether dread did dwell, 

Or anguish in her heart, were hard to tell .* 

Upon her arm a silver anchor lay, 

Whereon she leaned ever as befell, 

And ever up to heaven, as she did pray, 
Her steadfast eyes were bent, nor swerved no other way." 

Faery Queen, Book I. Canto 10. 

f Fidelia, or Faith. 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 41 

We form an opinion that the possession of a certain 
thing, or the accomplishment of a certain object, will 
free us from certain simple pains which we now feel, 
or from certain pains of desire excited in us by con- 
sidering that thing or that object as within our reach, 
and likely to be productive to us of certain pleas- 
ures ; and these simple pains, or pains of desire, thus 
te2ome motives with us to seek that thing, or to 
pursue that object ; even though in the pursuit we 
are obliged to encounter many other pains. When- 
ever those other pains come to be more potent than 
the pains of desire by which we are impelled, they 
will divert us, either permanently or temporarily, from 
our pursuit ; or a change in our opinion as to the 
power of the object to affect us ; or a cessation of 
those simple pains, or pains of desire, by which we 
were originally impelled, will suddenly put a stop to 
such systems of action, even after they have been 
followed up for almost a whole lifetime. In these 
long pursuits, the pleasures of Hope cheer our toils, 
and often form our only compensation. 

55. When one simple pain, or one pain of desire, 
reaches so high a degree that all other contemporary 
pains and desires become as nothing in comparison, 
it is very easy to foresee the direction of human ac- 
tion. But, in general, so many simple pains, and so 
many pains of desire, are operating together, often in 
opposite directions, and their power is occasionally 
so modified by the coexistence of pleasures, as to 
render the determination beforehand of human ac- 
tion, in particular cases, even if we could obtain an 
accurate enumeration of all the motives which op- 
4* 



42 THEORY OF MORALS. 

erate in any given case, an exceedingly complicated 
arid nice calculation. This difficulty is aggravated 
by differences in sensibility, that is to say, the differ- 
ent degrees in which different men are capable of 
pleasures and pains ; there being, with respect to 
the capacity for some pains and some pleasures, a 
very great variation in different individuals. 

There are, however, several pains, the presence or 
the apprehension of which, is so universal, and so 
constant, or the return of which is so regular, and 
which are capable of rising to so high a degree, that 
they do positively determine the general direction of 
human conduct. Such are the pains of hunger and 
thirst, of heat and cold, of wounds and diseases. It is 
these pains that make food and drink, clothing and 
shelter, or those means whereby food, clothing, and 
shelter can be obtained, such universal and inevitable 
objects of human pursuit. 

56. There are several other sets of Pains and 
Pleasures which keep human life for ever revolving, 
as it were, in a circle ; the one set acting, so to 
speak, as a centrifugal, the other as a centripetal 
force, namely, the Pains and Pleasures of Activity, 
muscular and mental. 

Men find a certain pleasure in the mere exertion 
of all their faculties, whether muscular or mental, 
independently of any extraneous pleasure which that 
exertion may procure for them. These are the pleas- 
ures of activity ; # and the desire of these pleasures, 

* Under the general head of the pleasures and pains of activity, 
are to be included not only the pleasures and pains of muscular activ- 
ity, but those also of mental activity, of the activity of the Perceptive 
and Sensitive faculties. 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 43 

independently of any others, constantly leads men to 
action. But if the exertion of any faculty be pro- 
tracted beyond a certain period, which period is very 
different in different individuals, what before was a 
pleasure changes to a pain. These pains of activity, 
commonly called pains of fatigue, presently become 
overpowering, and make rest absolutely necessary ; 
which, under these circumstances, as it affords relief 
from pain, assumes the character of a pleasure. It is, 
however, a mere negative pleasure, that is, a relief 
from pain ; never a positive pleasure, a pleasure in 
itself. It ought also to be observed, that what is 
commonly called rest, is, in general, only a change 
in the method of action. There is no perfect rest, 
or cessation of all activity, except in the soundest 
sleep. What, under the names of Weariness or En- 
nui, the first word applying more to the muscles, 
the second to the mind, is sometimes spoken of as 
though it were a pain of inactivity, is in fact a pain 
of activity, a pain resulting from the continued per- 
severance in one course of action, which has thus 
become wearisome ; combined often with pains of 
desire, resulting from the idea of certain other 
courses of action, which we conceive would be more 
agreeable. 

57. It is by the capacity of a longer continuous 
exertion of all their faculties, and a pleasure in it, 
that men are principally distinguished from children ; 
and it is by a similar capacity of a longer continuous 
exertion of their mental faculties that educated and 
civilized men are distinguished from the uneducated 
and the savage. 



44 THEORY OF MORALS. 

58- Now among the other simple pains, and pains 
of desire, which together or separately are the springs 
of all human action, there is to be found a certain 
simple pain which has its origin in the perception of 
the pains of others, and a certain desire which origi- 
nates in the pleasure we derive from contemplating 
the pleasures of others. That capacity or sensibility, 
whereby we are capable of feeling this pain and this 
pleasure, is called Benevolence, or Love, and, be- 
cause it is esteemed the most excellent and distin- 
guishing part of human nature, Humanity. 

59. Those actions which owe their origin to this 
motive, — which, but for this motive, men never 
would perform, — and there are a certain number of 
actions which spring from this motive alone, and a 
vast many over which it exercises an influence 
greater or less, and which but for that influence 
never would be performed, — constitute the class of 
Disinterested actions ; while all actions, into which 
this motive does not enter, or into which it enters in 
so slight a degree that they would have been per- 
formed without it, are classed together as Selfish, or 
Interested actions. 

This is a distinction universally made, and familiar 
to everybody. Self-interest, in the ordinary use of 
that word, excludes the motive of benevolence, or 
love ; and to use it, as some writers do, in a sense 
including that motive, is precisely like using the 
word white in a sense including black, on the ground- 
that black and white are both colors, and therefore 
properly called by the same name. It is an abuse of 
language which can only lead to endless confusion. 






CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 45 

60. If, by the word self-interest, nothing is meant 
but pains and desires, or the susceptibility to pains 
and desires, then, to say that self-interest is the only 
source of human action, is to say what is quite true; 
but at the same time it is to use a form of expression 
almost certain to deceive both those who hear it and 
those who use it. # 

But if the term selfishness or self-interest be used 
in its common and proper signification, if it be 
employed as the thoroughgoing Epicureans and Hob- 
bists employed it, and as all the world employs it, 
in a sense excluding those pleasures and pains which 
originate in the sentiment of benevolence, then to 
assert that self-interest is the only motive of human 
action, is to assert a palpable falsehood, against which 
the sentiment of benevolence exclaims, and, as will 
presently appear, not less loudly even selfishness 
itself. 

61. It is in this sentiment of Benevolence, Love, 

* Even writers so acute as Helvetius and Bentham have been en- 
tangled by this ambiguity of expression. Under the term Self-inter- 
est or Interest well understood, they include the pleasures and the 
pains of benevolence itself. Indeed, but for the capacity in man of 
those pains and those pleasures, the " greatest happiness of the great- 
est number" would be an unmeaning jingle, incapable of exercising 
the slightest influence over conduct. In this particular Helvetius 
and Bentham differ from those modern Hobbists and those old Epicu- 
reans, who denied the existence of such a motive as benevolence, and 
who employed the word self-interest in its common and proper sense, 
excluding that motive altogether. Yet, misled by the phrase self- 
interest, though they employ it in a sense equivalent to pains and 
desires, Helvetius and Bentham often reason as though they were 
mere Epicureans; as if benevolence were a chimera, and as if human 
conduct were wholly uninfluenced by it; *a course of procedure quite 
inconsistent even with their own systems, according to which benev- 
olence does in fact play a considerable, though a subordinate part. 



46 THEORY OF MORALS. 

or. Humanity ; it is in this capacity of feeling pains 
and pleasures from contemplating the pains and 
pleasures of others, that moral distinctions originate. 
This is the pain which is called moral pain ; this is 
the pleasure which is called rnoral pleasure. 

•62. We designate things in general as good or 
bad, according as they produce to us pleasures or 
pains. It is thus that pleasures and pains enter into, 
and give color, so to speak, to all our judgments. 
Thus we talk of a good dinner, a good pen, a good 
picture, a good song ; a bad dish, a bad horse, a bad 
poem, a bad prospect. But we speak of things as 
morally good or morally bad, only as they afford us 
a pleasure, or inflict upon us a pain, of benevolence. 
Thus when we speak of an act as morally good, we 
intend thereby an act, the contemplation of which 
produces in us a pleasure of benevolence ; and when 
we speak of men as morally bad, we intend thereby 
men whose conduct inflicts upon us pains of benev- 
olence. 

This double use of the epithets good and bad — 
for the qualifying adverb, by which the different 
senses of those epithets may be distinguished, is 
usually dropped — frequently leads, as we have al- 
ready mentioned, to great ambiguity, and confusion 
of ideas. We often speak of bad men and bad acts, 
without our hearers being able to distinguish, and 
without ourselves accurately distinguishing, whether 
we intend thereby, actions and men bad in a moral 
point of view, that is, productive to us of pains of 
benevolence, moral pain, or bad in general, that is, 
productive to us of pain in general, without any 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 47 

reference to the particular kind. It certainly may- 
happen that both these senses of the word coincide ; 
and that an action may be pronounced bad in gen- 
eral, merely because it is morally bad. But the 
contrary also is frequently the case. It is indeed to 
be observed, that men are with difficulty brought to 
admit, that actions productive of any kind of pain to 
themselves can be right ; or that actions productive 
of any kind of pleasure to themselves can be wrong ; 
a circumstance which exercises an extensive influ- 
ence over moral judgments. 

63. The sentiment of benevolence leads us to 
prize the sentiment of benevolence whether in our- 
selves or in others, because we see in that sentiment 
a constant source of pleasures in general, to others, 
and of moral pleasures to ourselves. At the same 
time all the selfish sentiments combine to extol the 
sentiment of benevolence in others, because they see 
in the benevolence of others a help or means, often 
an essential means, towards their own gratification. 
Thus it happens, that those who have the least 
virtue themselves are often among the loudest in 
their praises of virtue. 

64. The observation of this fact, that the most 
selfish men, the men, that is, most destitute of virtue, 
are yet able to appreciate the excellence of virtue in 
general ; and of the additional fact, growing out of 
circumstances to be hereafter explained, that men 
perform many actions useful to others from merely 
selfish motives, the observation of these two facts 
led Epicurus and Hobbes to imagine that moral dis- 
tinctions might be accounted for independently of 



48 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



motives of benevolence, and by the mere force of 
self-interest alone. 

65. Many men, themselves of the greatest benev- 
olence, and the most ardent friends of virtue and of 
human happiness, observing what little effect is pro- 
duced upon the conduct of men in general, by dis- 
quisitions about the abstract beauty and intrinsic 
excellence of virtue; disgusted with those ascetic 
systems, the object of which seemed to be to banish 
enjoyment from the earth, and to reduce all to one 
common level of misery ; perceiving how mystical 
systems of morals, instead of contributing to human 
happiness, were turned into engines of a universal 
despotism, and gave rise, under the two forms of 
bigotry and fanaticism, to the most frightful evils ; 
perceiving to what abuses the theory of self-sacrifice 
was liable, especially when conjoined with mystical 
notions ; perceiving also how powerful an influence 
self-interest exerts over human conduct ; many be- 
nevolent men, and warm friends of human happiness, 
perceiving these practical defects in existing theories 
and systems, eagerly caught at the idea of pressing 
self-interest into the service of benevolence, of recon- 
ciling expediency and right, and of producing actions 
beneficial to mankind at large, by the mere force of 
selfish motives. 

66. Undoubtedly these men have rendered a good 
service to morality, by showing that moral pleasures 
and selfish pleasures are not so often in opposition to 
each other as had been imagined ; and that selfish 
good and moral good are, in a great number of cases, 
nearly or quite coincident. This method is of great 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 49 

use towards promoting the increase of ordinary vir- 
tues. In cases, however, in which extraordinary 
virtue is required it fails entirely ; indeed it stands in 
the way. 

67. It is curious to observe, on the other hand, 
among those who have carried on the most desperate 
war against Hobbism, Utility, and Interest well un- 
derstood, many who have contended for disinterest- 
edness in human conduct, under influences almost 
purely self-interested ; or at least excessively narrow. 
The systems of Hobbes, of Hume, of Helvetius, and 
of Bentham, taught that men might, and ought, in 
what they did, to have a chief reference to their own 
temporal wellbeing. The mystical systems of morals 
which, before the time of these philosophers, had 
been universally prevalent in the schools, declared it 
to be the moral duty of men to disregard their own 
temporal interest altogether. This doctrine, though, 
as usually taught, a system of pure selfishness, was 
nevertheless recommended by a specious appearance 
of disinterestedness. It had early been pressed into 
the service of despotism ; and men had long been 
taught by priestly moralists, that it was their duty 
to submit to all sorts of oppressions and miseries ; to 
surrender up to a select few all the good things of 
this life ; and to labor day and night for the sole 
benefit of those few ; because such is the will and 
pleasure of God ; and it is man's duty to promote 
God's pleasure by obeying his will. Hence the doc- 
trine of the divine right of popes, bishops, priests, 
and kings, and the other doctrine, less celebrated, but 
equally noxious, of the divine appointment of ranks 
5 



50 THEORY OF MORALS. 

and orders, in other words, of the divine right of 
aristocracies. 

All the defenders of the existing unequal distribu- 
tion of the good things of this world, at once took 
up arms against the doctrine of self-interest, whether 
in the shape of Hobbism, of Interest well under- 
stood, or of Utilitarianism ; because they readily- 
perceived that neither of these theories would allow 
morality to be any longer made use of, as the tool of 
a self-interested despotism. Thus we may explain 
the curious enigma, presented during the last cen- 
tury, of the most benevolent, humane, and liberal- 
minded philosophers contending for the sovereignty 
of self-interest, and that, too, from the most benevo- 
lent motives ; while all the bigots, and all those 
most violently opposed to sacrificing any existing 
social arrangements to the demands of humanity, 
however loud, were most selfishly clamorous in their 
defence of the disinterestedness of virtue ! 

68. The fact, that moral distinctions originate in 
the sentiment of Benevolence, and that benevolent 
actions and virtuous actions are often but different 
descriptions of the same thing, in fact, that all vir- 
tuous actions must have some tinge of benevolence 
about them, is far too obvious not to have been 
noticed by many who have turned their attention to 
the subject of morals. It has accordingly been held 
by several forensic schools of moral theorists, and this 
idea has been adopted by some of the mystics, that 
virtue consists in pure Benevolence ; and to actions 
springing from that motive alone do they give the 
title of Disinterested Actions. This false limitation 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 5 I 

of Disinterestedness to pure Benevolence, this theory 
which has made virtue synonymous with a total 
abandonment of self, which makes the least re- 
gard to self inconsistent with virtue, has led its 
partisans, when they have attempted to apply their 
notions to practical morals, into endless paradoxes. 
It has brought the Disinterested theory into great 
contempt with all men of the world ; that is to say, 
with the men who have had the greatest experience 
of human nature, and who ought to understand it 
best ; and has given to the partisans of the Selfish 
theory a great advantage in the argument. 

69. In fact these ultra advocates of disinterested- 
ness, these partisans of the doctrine of self-sacrifice, 
have wholly overlooked or confounded the distinc- 
tion universally made in air moral judgments be- 
tween actions which are right but indifferent ; those 
which are not only right, but duties ; and those 
which are right in the highest degree, but at the 
same time not duties ; and which a man may omit 
to perform, and yet be entitled to the reputation of 
ordinary virtue. The partisans of self-sacrifice, with 
as much contempt for the common sense and com- 
mon feelings of mankind, as was ever exhibited by 
Stoics or Epicureans, have held and taught that all 
beneficial actions within our power to perform are 
duties, and that every selfish act is a crime. It is a 
man's duty, they tell us, to devote himself entirely 
to doing good ; that is, to devote all his time and 
thoughts to the welfare of others, without any regard 
whatsoever for himself; or at least only so much 
regard for himself as is essential to preserve his 



52 THEORY OF MORALS. 

existence, and so to enable him to go on doing good 
to others. It is a man's duty, they say, to make a 
perpetual sacrifice of his own wellbeing for the 
benefit of his neighbours. Every action, in any 
degree injurious to others, is wrong ; and nothing can 
possibly make such an action right, or even permis- 
sible. 

The partisans of these self-sacrificing doctrines 
have naturally enough been led to hold, that morals 
are only to be carried to perfection by exterminating 
or subduing all the other sentiments, or capacities of 
pleasure or pain which belong to human nature, and 
so giving the sentiment of benevolence an absolute 
preponderancy. Inasmuch as these other sentiments 
lead perpetually to selfish actions, they are looked 
upon as participating in the criminality which is 
ascribed to selfish actions. 

It is not considered, that, supposing this object to 
be accomplished with the whole human race, the 
sentiment of benevolence would no longer have any 
matter upon which to exercise itself; since it is 
chiefly through the medium of the selfish sentiments, 
that men can confer benefits upon each other. Still 
less is it considered, that supposing this object to be 
accomplished in any one individual, he must be 
reduced to a state of almost absolute inaction ; since 
there exist a vast number of most important cases, in 
which it is quite impossible to confer pleasures, with- 
out at the same time inflicting pains. This is the 
case in particular with respect to a great number of 
those acts, the performance of which is universally 
considered to require the highest pitch of virtue. 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 53 

Indeed, it is to be observed, with respect to many 
partisans of this self-sacrificing school, that while 
the talk of doing good is for ever on their lips, they 
all the while talk and do nothing ; alleging, as an 
excuse for their inaction, the fear lest in attempting 
to benefit some they may injure others. The great- 
est happiness of the greatest number, according to 
the disciples of this school, is only an object to be 
aimed at provided no person in the world suffers pain 
in consequence ; nor can I possibly be justified in 
conferring a benefit, however great, upon any num- 
ber, however large, provided one individual thereby 
suffers pain. Accordingly it has been held, that 
homicide in war, in a duel, or on the scaffold of 
justice, stands upon the same moral level with de- 
liberate murder. These moralists have even denied 
the right of governments to inflict punishments, or 
indeed to govern at all. They have preached the 
doctrine of entire non-resistance to injuries ; and in 
general, have taught a paradoxical system of morals 
too inconsistent with human nature even for them- 
selves to attempt to carry into practice. 

We have already pointed out how, upon purely 
mystic grounds, a similar theory of self-sacrifice was 
arrived at. These two schools of self-sacrificing mor- 
alists, the forensic and the mystic, have always exhib- 
ited a tendency to unite, and, for reasons above indi- 
cated, and to be more fully explained hereafter, to 
adopt ascetic ideas. They differ only in this, — the 
mystic school holds that we should be actuated in 
all our conduct solely by Love of God ; the forensic 
school sets up, as the only motive, Love of man. We 
5* 



54 THEORY OF MORALS. 

shall show presently how it has been attempted to 
combine and identify these motives. 

70. It is necessary that the Disinterested theory 
of morals should be freed from these incumbrances ; 
and should be so modified as to be made conformable 
to human conduct and human opinions, such as they 
everywhere actually exist. Instead of bending facts 
to theory, we must make theory conformable to 
facts. To that task we now turn. 

71. We have already explained the moral distri- 
bution of actions, looking merely to their external 
character, into the three great classes, Praiseworthy, 
Indifferent, and Wrong. We have shown that all 
actions are arranged in one or the other of these 
classes, accordingly as they are regarded as produc- 
tive of pleasure, of pain, or of neither, to sensitive 
beings other than the actor ; a distribution, be it 
observed, which originates entirely in the sentiment 
of benevolence. 

But there is a great class of actions, to which just 
now we had occasion to allude, the results of which 
are not simple, but complex. These actions produce 
pleasure to some, and pain to others ; or they pro- 
duce both pleasure and pain to the same individual. 
It is with regard to this sort of actions that the great- 
est differences exist in systems of practical morals. 
We shall find, however, that actions of this com- 
plicated character, where different individuals are 
affected by them, are reckoned as praiseworthy 
or wrong, accordingly as attention is principally 
directed to the pleasures, or to the pains, which 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 55 

they occasion.* Where all the results, both pain- 
ful and pleasurable, fall upon the same individual, 
the classification of the act depends upon our opinion 
as to the relative vivacity and permanency of the 
pleasures and the pains, 

72. Such is the moral classification of actions, 
when we consider only, or principally, their external 
character ; that is to say, the results which they pro- 
duce. But when we come to consider actions with 
regard to their internal character, that is, with regard 
to the motives which produce them, they are divided 
into the five following classes : 

1st. Meritorious actions ; actions which entitle 
men to applause, and to the character of superior vir- 
tue. These actions rise by various gradations one 
above another. 

2d. Duties, or obligatory actions ; actions the 
performance of which is expected from all men ; and 
which entitle the performer to the character of or- 
dinary virtue. These actions also admit of various 
degrees, some being considered much more obliga- 
tory than others. 

3d. Indifferent actions ; actions which do not 
affect the moral character in any way. Morally 
considered, these actions are all perfectly alike. 

4th. Permissible actions ; actions which, al- 
though they may be painful to others, and in- 
tended to be so, are yet not esteemed vicious ; that 

* The laws according to which the pleasurable or the painful 
results of an action, in its effect upon others, principally attract our 
attention, will be stated in the next chapter. 






56 THEORY OF MORALS. 

is, are not considered as proofs of a want of ordinary 
virtue. These actions likewise admit of many gra- 
dations, some being esteemed more permissible than 
others. 

5th. Vicious, criminal, or wicked actions : the 
performance of which proves a want of ordinary vir- 
tue. These actions descend by various gradations 
to the lowest depths of iniquity. 

Before the Disinterested Theory of Morals can be- 
come at all satisfactory, it must be made consistent 
with this quintuplicate division of actions ; a divis- 
ion which prevails in all practical systems of morals, 
all the world over ; and we must explain, also, and 
reconcile to this theory the great discrepancies every- 
where discernible in practical systems of morals, in 
the classification of actions under these several divis- 
ions. 

73. For that purpose the following propositions 
will suffice. 

First. Those actions beneficial to others, or supposed 
to be so, which are performed by the greater number of 
any given society, and which, therefore, argue only an 
ordinary degree of virtue, that is to say, an ordinary 
degree of the force of those sentiments by which acts ben- 
eficial to others are produced, are esteemed by that so- 
ciety to be Duties. The performance of these actions 
entitles to the character of ordinary virtue ; and 
men are considered under a moral obligation to per- 
form them.* 

* It was the perception of the truth of this proposition that led Aris- 
totle to define virtue as consisting in a habit of mediocrity, — a defi- 
nition correct enough, so far as ordinary virtue is concerned, but 
which excludes all idea of extraordinary virtue. Hence, too, both in 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF ACTIONS. 57 

Second. Those actions esteemed beneficial to others, 
which are not performed by the majority of any society, 
and which, therefore, argue a superior force of those 
sentiments by tohich acts beneficial to others are produced, 
are esteemed by that society to be virtues of a high degree, 
meritorious acts ; and meritorious in proportion to 
their rarity ; entitling the performer to the character of 

EXTRAORDINARY VIRTUE. 

Third. Those actions esteemed injurious to others, 
from the performance of which the majority of any so- 
ciety are not restrained by the force of moral obligation, 
that is to say, by the force of those sentiments by which 
acts beneficial to others are produced, are in that society 
esteemed permissible ; that is, are regarded as acts 
the performance of tohich does not detract from avian's 
reputation for ordinary virtue. 

Fourth. Those actions esteemed injurious to others 
from the performance of which the majority of any society 
are restrained by the force of moral obligation, that is, by 
the force of those sentiments by which actions beneficial 
to others are produced, are in that society esteemed bad, 
vicious, criminal, wicked ; and the performance of 
such acts subjects him who performs them to the charac- 
ter of a vicious, wicked man, deficient in the sense of 
moral obligation ; an unprincipled man ; a bad man ; 
and bad in proportion to the rarity of the sort of acts to 
which he oxoes that reputation. 

Fifth. With respect to that great class of actions which 
have a double result, injurious to some and beneficial to 

the Greek and Latin languages morals and manners were designated 
by the same word, — that being esteemed moral or ordinarily virtu- 
ous, which was customary, — which the average force of the senti- 
ment of benevolence induced or allowed men to do. 



58 THEORY OF MORALS. 

others^ we have already stated upon what principles those 
actions are classified as right or wrong. We shall pres- 
ently show how it happens that a slight benefit to 
one party will often so engross our attention, as to 
make us overlook, or neglect, a great injury to an- 
other party ; and how a slight injury to one party 
will often so engross our attention as to make us 
overlook and neglect a great benefit to another par- 
ty ; thus producing very discordant opinions as to 
the point whether these actions with double results 
are right or wrong. That point being once settled, 
the action, if we regard it as right, is esteemed mer- 
itorious, or a duty ; if we regard it as wrong, it 
is esteemed permissible or criminal, according to the 
rules enunciated in the four preceding propositions. 
74. If these propositions are well founded, it will 
follow that Morality, instead of being an abstract 
thing, independent of human nature, something ex- 
ternal to it, whether originating in the absolute na- 
ture of things, in the decrees of God, or the arts of 
man, grows, in fact, out of man's very constitution, 
and so affords matter for a true subjective science of 
morals. It will also follow, that we may discard as 
unfounded the opinion so sedulously propagated, not 
only by partisans of the mystic school, but even by 
many forensic writers, that it is possible, indeed cer- 
tain, that individuals and whole communities may 
and will shake off or lose all sense of moral distinc- 
tions, and cast off the restraint of moral obligation, 
unless public teachers of morality be employed and 
paid, to inculcate moral precepts. The first of these 
conclusions is of the greatest importance to abstract 
science, the second to practical politics. 



LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 59 



CHAPTER II. 

LAWS OF THE OPERATION OF THE SENTIMENT OF BENEV- 
OLENCE AND OF THE OTHER PRINCIPAL EMOTIONS 
WHICH CONTROL OR MODIFY IT. 

1. To make manifest the truth of the five fore- 
going propositions, to demonstrate that all moral judg- 
ments are regulated by them, and to point out how 
conformable they are to the constitution of man, it 
will be necessary to investigate the laws according 
to which the sentiment of benevolence acts ; and to 
consider the other principal sensibilities to pleasure 
and pain, by which the impulse of the sentiment of 
benevolence towards the production of beneficial ac- 
tions,* is sometimes corroborated, and sometimes 
opposed. 

2. The first law which regulates the action of the 
sentiment of benevolence is a universal law, common 
to all our sensibilities to pleasures and pains. In 
order that the sentiment of benevolence should op- 
erate, that is, in order that we should feel pain or 
pleasure from the pain or pleasure of others, and 
should in consequence be impelled to act, it is neces- 
sary that the stimulus, or natural exciting cause of 
the activity of this sentiment, to wit, the pain or 



* By the phrase, beneficial actions, when used in this Treatise, must 
always be understood actions productive of pleasure to sensitive beings 
other than the actor. The phrase, injurious actions, is used to signify 
actions which fall under the class of criminal actions, actions not 
only painful to others, but morally wrong. 



60 THEORY OF MORALS. 

pleasure of others, should be present to our under- 
standing ; either sensibly present, that is, perceived 
at the time, through the medium of the senses ; or 
conceptively present, that is, contemplated at the 
time, by means of the conceptive faculty, under which 
name we include what are usually denominated the 
faculties of Memory, Imagination, and Judgment. 

3. As with the greater number of men things 
presently perceived by the senses, occupy a very 
large proportion of their thoughts, so the pleasure or 
pain of others seldom becomes with them a motive 
of action, except when, and so long as it is an ob- 
ject of sensible perception ; and, therefore, with the 
greater number of men, the sentiment of benevo- 
lence only embraces those with whom they come 
into sensible contact, that is to say, a very limited 
number. 

The degree in which the conceptive faculty is ex- 
ercised, greatly varies, not only with individuals, but 
with whole classes, communities, and nations. Un- 
assisted memory can only recall some few particulars 
of what we ourselves have seen or felt ; and Imagi- 
nation unassisted can only rearrange the materials of 
memory in a new order. But the faculty of speech, 
and the arts of painting and sculpture, and more par- 
ticularly of writing, enable each individual to com- 
municate all his recollections, all his imaginations, 
all his emotions to a vast many others. Conceptions 
committed to writing assume a permanent character, 
and become a common stock for all by whom those 
writings are perused : and thus is opened, among the 
cultivated and educated, a new and vast field for the 



LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 61 

exercise of the sentiment of benevolence, and, in- 
deed, of many other sentiments. 

Those pains and pleasures of others by which the 
conduct of the savage is influenced are only the pains 
and pleasures of those immediately about him, and 
with whom he comes personally into contact. We 
ought, however, to add the occasional influence of 
the supposed pains and pleasures of some vague, 
. supernatural beings ; for the mystical hypothesis, in 
greater or less development, is to be found prevail- 
ing even among the most savage tribes. 

In a cultivated age and country, all participate, 
more or less, in the great store of accumulated 
knowledge ; and by the aid of the conceptive facul- 
ty, the pains and pleasures of the antipodes, of gen- 
erations long passed away, or yet unborn, come to 
exercise a greater or less influence over us. 

It is to be observed, however, that, except in a few 
rare instances, the senses are always an overmatch 
for the conceptive faculty. What is sensibly per- 
ceived affects us much more powerfully than what 
is conceptively perceived ; and the permanent rever- 
sal of this relation of the senses to the conceptive 
faculty, indicates a disordered intellect. 

A remarkable illustration of the law, that the 
pains and pleasures of other sensitive beings, in order 
to affect us, and to influence our conduct, must be 
objects of distinct perception, is afforded by the fact, 
that while we are very sensibly affected by the 
pains and pleasures of the larger animals, between 
whom and ourselves we can discover a close anal- 
ogy, and whose pains and pleasures are evinced 
6 



62 THEORY OF MORALS. 

by signs which we cannot fail to understand ; the 
pains and pleasures of the inferior orders of crea- 
tion, of insects, worms, shell-fish, and animalculse, 
affect us very slightly, or not at all. That man 
would be thought guilty of a ridiculous affecta- 
tion, who should undertake to pity the pains of an 
oyster ; and the mutilation and death of ten thou- 
sand flies or emmets, even by his own act, would 
not give the slightest uneasiness to the man, whom 
the slaughter, before his eyes, of a single cow or 
sheep would affect quite disagreeably. An oyster or 
an ant may, perhaps, suffer as much in being crush- 
ed to death, as an ox. But the signs of pain in the 
ant or oyster are much less perceptible, and hardly 
attract our notice. 

4. It is in this law, too, that originates the great 
efficacy of complaint, as a means of exciting benevo- 
lence, and of obtaining aid or relief. Complaint con- 
sists in giving evident signs of the pain we suffer ; 
and so bringing home that pain to the knowledge of 
those about us. Many actions esteemed innocent, 
so long as they are not complained of, acquire the 
character of being wrong, if persevered in, in spiteof 
complaints ; and there is no surer sign of hard- 
heartedness, that is, of a deficiency in benevolence, 
than to listen to complaints unmoved, especially 
when they relate to our own conduct. 

5. When we compare the force of the sentiment 
of benevolence and of the pains and desires which 
originate in it, with the force of the other sensibili- 
ties to pains and pleasures which form a part of 
human nature, we find a great number of pains capa- 






LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 63 

ble of rising, and which ordinarily do rise, to a 
pitch at which they gain a complete mastery over 
the pains and desires of benevolence, so as often to 
impel men to act in direct opposition to the dictates 
of benevolence. 

Among these potent pains may be enumerated the 
pains of hunger, of thirst, of heat, of cold, as well 
as that endless number produced by wounds, and 
diseases, including that depression of mind called 
Melancholy, a disease, under the influence of which, 
existence becomes a burden, and nothing has any 
longer any power to give us pleasure. All these 
pains frequently rise to such a height as to overmas- 
ter the usual force of the pains of benevolence ; so 
that men, under their influence, are no longer con- 
sidered subject to the ordinary laws of moral obliga- 
tion ; and many acts, under those circumstances, 
assume a permissible character, which otherwise 
would be considered wholly inexcusable. On the 
other hand, many acts performed by persons sub- 
jected to the influence of these potent pains, by a 
hungry or thirsty man, for instance, which, under 
other circumstances, would be considered as quite 
matters of course, assume, from the counteracting 
influence to which the actor is exposed, a character of 
exalted virtue. Such was the act of Sir Philip Sid- 
ney, who, wounded and dying, refused the cup of 
water brought to him, with those memorable words, 

— pointing to a wounded soldier gapping with thirst, 

— " Give it to him ; his need is greater than mine ! " 
6. In fact, every degree of simple pain, not moral 

pain, which a man suffers, is liable to have, and with 



64 THEORY OF MORALS. 

certain exceptions presently to be pointed out, does 
have, an effect, in proportion to its intensity, to di- 
minish the influence of the sentiment of benevolence 
upon his conduct; and that for the obvious reason, 
that it impels him to act in a peculiar direction of 
its own ; often and most commonly, in a direction 
very divergent from that of benevolence. This fact 
will serve at once to explain the reason of that obser- 
vation so generally made, that misery produces vice ; 
that competency is the greatest security for virtue ; 
and that poverty often leads directly to crime. Pov- 
erty exposes to many pains which tend to neutralize 
the force of the sentiment of benevolence ; while 
competency protects against those pains. Hence, 
too, we may learn the futility of all efforts, made or 
making, to inspire with sentiments of virtue and 
benevolence, great masses of men, who are kept, at 
the same time, in a state of starvation ; or in a state 
of social inferiority and disgrace, hardly less painful 
than starvation itself. 

7. Not only does pain of any kind, in proportion 
to its severity, commonly tend to neutralize the 
force of the sentiment of benevolence ; it gives occa- 
sion to the exercise of a sentiment directly opposite 
to that of benevolence ; to wit, the sentiment of 
Malevolence, whereby we become capable of feeling 
pain at the pleasure of other sensitive beings, and of 
feeling pleasure at their pain ; from which capacity of 
pleasure springs a desire to inflict pain upon others. 
The compass of this sentiment, however, is not 
equal to that of the sentiment of benevolence ; since 
it embraces only those whom we suppose to have 



LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 65 

inflicted pains upon us, or from whom we apprehend 
the infliction of pains, which apprehension itself 
amounts to a present pain. The sentiment of Ma- 
levolence is not only excited by the infliction upon 
us of other kinds of pains, but also by the infliction of 
moral pains, or pains of benevolence, that is, by the 
infliction of pains upon others who are the objects of 
our benevolence. When first, or suddenly excited, 
this sentiment is called anger, or indignation ; when 
it assumes a permanent character, it is called Malev- 
olence, or Hate. The desire of inflicting pain upon 
others, to which this sentiment gives rise, is com- 
monly called the spirit of retaliation ; or when it 
lasts long, and is carried to excessive lengths, Re- 
venge. 

As soon as any sensitive being becomes the object 
of this sentiment of malevolence, so far as relates to 
him individually the sentiment of benevolence falls 
into abeyance, and we take an actual pleasure in his 
pain. Hence the delight with which the punish- 
ment, and even 'the torture, of a great criminal is 
regarded ; and hence the horrid cruelties, which, 
under certain circumstances, men find a pleasure in 
inflicting upon each other. 

8. The sentiment of Benevolence, and the senti- 
ment of Malevolence are usually represented as abso- 
lutely hostile ; and so, in a certain point of view, 
they are. But as motives of human conduct, these 
two sentiments often concur to produce a common 
end. An unprovoked injury- — that is to say, an 
injury which the ordinary force of the sentiment of 
benevolence would have prevented — inflicted upon 
6* 



66 THEORY OF MORALS. 

a person who is an object of our benevolence, excites 
in us a pain of benevolence, which impels us to res- 
cue or relieve the injured party ; and that pain of 
benevolence excites in us, at the same time, a ma- 
levolent desire, which seeks its gratification by the 
infliction of some pain upon the party who did the 
injury. 

9. It is in this source that we find the origin of 
punishments, and of that satisfaction which the in- 
fliction of punishment diffuses throughout the com- 
munity, whether that infliction come from the in- 
jured party, from the bystanders, in the shape of 
what is called Lynch Law, or whether it be ad- 
ministered according to legal forms. This desire for 
the punishment of offenders is often denominated the 
sentiment or attribute of justice. What is designated 
by ihat respectable epithet is frequently little else 
than pure malevolence. 

As regards legal punishments, however, mere be- 
nevolence, without the least mixture of malevo- 
lence, may well sanction them ; since it is a decided 
advantage to the criminal himself to be guarantied 
a protection against the headlong vengeance of the 
injured party, or the excited hatred of an infuriated 
mob ; which only can be done by delivering him 
over to the officers of the law, and affixing a penalty 
to his offence, proportionate to the general idea of its 
injurious nature. 

Moreover, the infliction of punishment upon a 
criminal, not only produces a particular pleasure to 
the injured party, and a general pleasure to all who 
know the fact of the crime and the punishment ; 
but it also has a tendency to prevent the repetition 



LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 67 

of the offence, whether by the same party, or by 
others. It thus becomes a preventive of suffering. 
The pain of a man, who, by reason of his criminal 
act, has ceased to be an object of our benevolence, 
and whose pain therefore does not give us any pain, 
becomes a means of protecting others, who are objects 
of our benevolence, from being subjected to injuries 
which would cause us pain. 

10. The sentiment of malevolence has, in different 
societies, not only very different objects, but even a 
very different amount of average force. He who, 
in retaliation, goes beyond what would be prompted 
by the average force of that sentiment in the society 
to which he belongs, inflicts, by so doing, a pain of 
benevolence upon those about him, and becomes, in 
his turn, an object of moral disapprobation, that is to 
say, a cause of moral pain, and in consequence, an 
object also of the sentiment of malevolence. 

The force of this sentiment is strongest when 
excited by a recent injury; and many actions are 
esteemed permissible in an angry man which would 
be wholly inexcusable after there had been time for 
passion to subside. So, in a barbarous state of so- 
ciety, in which laws have hardly been established, 
and in which each man remains the avenger of his 
own wrongs and those of his friends and relations, 
many actions are esteemed permissible and even 
praiseworthy, which, in more civilized communities, 
are totally prohibited. 

11. The objects of the sentiment of Malevolence 
are sensitive beings who are the causes to us, volun- 
tarily or involuntarily, of pain. But such as are the 



68 THEORY OF MORALS. 

voluntary causes of pain to us, become the objects 
of this sentiment in a higher degree, because, joined 
to the first immediate pain which we suffer, there is 
the apprehension that the same ill-will which has 
caused us that immediate pain, may also inflict upon 
us additional future pains ; which apprehension of 
additional future pains is itself a second immediate 
pain of no inconsiderable severity. More yet, he 
who inflicts an injury upon us, which we consider to 
have been unprovoked, or greater than the provoca- 
tion would warrant, becomes thereby an object of 
our moral disapprobation, is considered by us to have 
done wrong, and to have shown himself, at least in 
that particular, a bad man ; and for that additional 
reason he becomes still more an object of our ma- 
levolence. 

12. In this way whole tribes and nations become 
objects of hatred and malevolence to each other, 
often from very slight beginnings. The feud com- 
mences, perhaps, in some trifling injury inflicted by 
a single member of one tribe or nation upon a single 
member of the other. The clansmen of the injured 
party, instigated by their benevolence towards the 
sufferer, conceive a feeling of malevolence towards 
the party who inflicted the injury — which malevo- 
lence presently extends to all his tribe, on account of 
the protection and countenance which their benevo- 
lence prompts them to afford him. They proceed 
to retort the injury suffered, either upon him who 
inflicted it, or upon some of those connected with 
him. Revenge, thus associated with benevolence, 
comes presently to be regarded as a moral duty. 



LAWS OF EMOTIONS. QQ 

Retaliation upon one side leads to retaliation upon 
the other. The quarrel spreads and widens, and at 
last is transmitted as an hereditary feud, the mem- 
bers of the two hostile tribes being taught from their 
earliest infancy to expect from each other nothing 
but injuries, and of course, to look upon each other 
with mutual malevolence. 

13. Malevolence often rests upon purely fanciful 
grounds. A notion is taken up, that men belonging 
to a particular class, of a particular complexion, or 
entertaining particular opinions, are, from that very 
fact, men destitute of virtue, and certain to inflict 
injuries upon all those with whom they come in 
contact. From being thus represented as objects of 
fear, they become at once objects of hatred. It is 
enough to call a man a Jew, a negro, an infidel, a 
heretic, an atheist, to present him to the minds of 
many other men as a creature destitute of humanity, 
and bent only upon mischief; and in those minds, 
to which such an idea is present, malevolence springs 
up as a necessary consequence.* 

* This mixture of benevolence and malevolence, in which malevo- 
lence appears to predominate, is the Antipathy which plays so conspicu- 
ous a part in the moral system of Bentham, and which he represents, 
united with Sympathy, as one of the antagonist principles to the Prin- 
ciple of Utility. What he calls Sympathy is a mixture of the same kind, 
in which Benevolence appears to predominate. Its operation will form 
the subject of the eighth chapter of the Second Part. In his general and 
sweeping condemnation of all sympathies and antipathies, Bentham 
has gone much too far. Without them the idea of General Utility 
could hardly exist. The Sympathies and Antipathies, which are hos- 
tile to the Principle of Utility, are sympathies and antipathies founded 
upon mistakes ; such as antipathies against a Frenchman, against a 
papist, against a negro, against an infidel ; antipathies founded on the 
notion, that he who is one or the other of these, must of necessity be 



70 THEORY OF MORALS. 

14. It is a common observation, that we hate 
those whom we have injured. It is not difficult to 
discover why. Those whom we have injured will 
naturally hate us, and will be watching, in all prob- 
ability, for some opportunity of retaliation. Of this 
we are well aware ; and being aware of it, we fear 
them. Fear is a present pain, caused by the appre- 
hension of future pains; and this pain of fear, ac- 
cording to the law already stated, excites our malev- 
olence against those who are the causes of it. We 
fear them because we have injured them ; and we 
hate them because we fear them. 

15. But if sensitive beings, who are the voluntary 
or involuntary causes of pain to us, cease in conse- 
quence to be objects of our benevolence, and even 
become to us objects of malevolence, it is at the 
same time true, that sensitive beings, in proportion 
as they are the voluntary or involuntary causes of 
pleasure to us, become, in the same proportion, par- 
ticularly the objects of our benevolence, a circum- 
stance which will help to explain what no theory of 
morals hitherto propounded does explain, why, of 
the sensitive beings within the scope of our percep- 
tive and conceptive faculties, some are much more 



a dangerous and injurious character. If such were the fact, these 
antipathies would be perfectly coincident with the principle of util- 
ity ; and their want of coincidence with that principle grows out of a 
mistake in point of fact. Antipathies, unfortunately, are often pro- 
longed after the facts in which they originated have ceased to exist. 

Mistaken sympathies arise in the same way, from falsely ascribing 
beneficial qualities to men or classes of men, by reason of their birth, 
nation, or opinions, religious, philosophical, or political, when, in point 
of fact, there is no warrant for any such inference. 



LAWS OF EMOTTONS. 71 

objects of our benevolence than others ; and why 
many things are ordinarily required as duties towards 
a wife, a child, a father, a friend, a neighbour, a 
fellow countryman, which, if done to a stranger, 
would argue a very uncommon degree of virtue, and 
would be set down as highly meritorious acts. 

16, We will examine, in the first place, those 
pleasures of which men are the involuntary causes to 
each other. One of the most universal and obvious 
of these pleasures, is that which arises from the per- 
ception of personal beauty. Those who have written 
upon Beauty have confounded many things together 
which have no connexion. Thus we hear of the 
beauty of virtue, which phrase, if it mean any thing, 
can only mean the pleasure which the contemplation 
of virtue affords us, a pleasure very distinct from 
those which beauty occasions, and which give rise 
to what are called the Laws of Taste, the investiga- 
tion of which will form the subject of a separate 
Treatise. By beauty, in its strict sense, is signified a 
power which certain colors, forms, and motions,* and 
combinations of color, form, and motion have, of 
producing in us certain pleasurable feelings. The 
contemplation of human beauty is attended by an 
additional pleasure, because certain outward traits 
are considered indicative of certain agreeable mental 
qualities. 

17. The human voice may be either melodious or 
otherwise ; that is, the cause to us of an additional 

" Motions indeed are but a sort of changeable forms, and the plea- 
sures and pains which originate in the contemplation of them are 
properly classed among the pleasures and pains of form. 



72 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



set of pleasures or pains. The power of speech 
enables men to excite in the minds of others, through 
the medium of the conceptive faculty, a great variety 
of pleasures and pains, especially those of mental ac- 
tivity, of admiration, of the ludicrous, of Self-com- 
parison, of Benevolence, of Malevolence, of Anticipa- 
tion, of Disappointment, many of which pleasures and 
pains a man often involuntarily produces in others; 
but which, nevertheless, are great causes of benevo- 
lence or malevolence towards him who produces 
them. 

18. Persons of different sexes have an additional 
and most powerful means of acting upon each other 
through the sentiment of sexual desire ; by reason 
of which, all other things being equal, men find far 
greater pleasure in the society of women than of 
men, and women far greater pleasure in the society 
of men than of women. So powerful is the opera- 
tion of this cause, that men and women, who, but 
for the circumstance of being of an opposite sex, 
would be absolutely in tolerable to each other, may 
become, from that cause alone, very pleasing com- 
panions ; an observation which will suffice to explain 
many curious phenomena in social and domestic life. 

The joint influence of sexual desire, of the pleas- 
ures which are produced by personal beauty, and of 
all or several of the other pleasures above alluded to, 
occasion in men and women towards persons of the 
opposite sex, that highest pitch of benevolence called, 
par excellence, Love. 

Love, in this its original and proper signification, 
at least when it reaches any high pitch, hardly 






LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 73 

extends, at one and the same time, to more than a 
single individual ; and persons of the most ordinary 
benevolence are accustomed, under the influence of 
this sentiment, to submit to great pains, or to sacri- 
fice great pleasures, for the greater pleasure of pleas- 
ing the object of their love. As in several codes of 
practical morals, men and women are supposed to 
marry from pure love and nothing else, and as they 
are made to promise to love each other as long as 
they live, which promise they are all held bound 
and able to fulfil ; husbands and wives being thus 
set down as perpetual lovers ; hence many things are 
regarded as duties between husbands and wives, 
which no other parties are expected to perform to- 
wards each other ; and which, if done to a stranger, 
would prove a degree of benevolence very uncom- 
mon. The circumstance, that love embraces but a 
single individual at once, explains why it commands, 
notwithstanding the intensity of benevolence which 
it implies, but a limited degree of moral approbation. 
19. The pleasure of Wonder, or that agreeable 
feeling usually called Admiration, has a power over 
the sentiment of benevolence, hardly, if at all, infe- 
rior to that of sexual desire ; and indeed this feeling 
of admiration is a necessary element in that com- 
pound sentiment called Romantic Love, which plays 
so conspicuous a part in the literature of Modern 
Europe. When the sexual element is wanting, that 
high degree of benevolence towards particular indi- 
viduals, of whatever sex, or even towards imaginary 
beings, which admiration produces, is called Loyal- 
ty, Devotion, and sometimes, also, Love. This 
7 



74 THEORY OF MORALS. 

double use of the word Love, sometimes including, 
and sometimes excluding, the element of sexual 
desire, has constantly led to a great confusion of 
ideas.* What adds to the confusion is, that the word 
Love is also used to signify any strong desire. 
Thus we speak of Love in general, meaning thereby 
emotions of benevolence ; of the love of wealth ; the 
love of power ; and of self-love, meaning thereby the 
combined influence of all the desires, except those 
which originate in the sentiment of benevolence, 
and sometimes not even excepting those. 

Admiration is an agreeable feeling, produced in us 
by the contemplation of any thing that is new to us, 
or uncommon. What is common, we view with in- 
difference. When the new or uncommon thing, 
besides being new or uncommon, is beautiful also, or 
possesses any other capacity of giving pleasure, the 
additional pleasure of admiration gives it so much the 
more powerful an influence over us. When the new 
or uncommon thing has no beauty, nor any other 
power of giving pleasure, separate from its rarity or 
its novelty, that alone may produce a great effect. 
And even when the new or uncommon thing is in 
itself a cause of pain, the pleasure of admiration 
which it produces may for a time neutralize and 
even overbalance that pain ; an observation which 
will enable us to understand why, in works of art, 



* Platonic Love is the name given to those attachments between 
persons of different sexes who are fitted to excite the sexual senti- 
ment in each other, but from whose attachment that sentiment is 
supposed to be excluded. The existence, however, of such a thing as 
Platonic Love is regarded by the best authorities as very apocryphal. 



LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 75 

novelty, and even faulty novelty, is often mistaken 
for beauty. 

Sublimity is uncommon greatness or power. This 
is implied in the very etymology of the word. The 
pleasure which sublime objects afford is a pleasure 
of admiration altogether distinct from that which 
beautiful objects afford ; though, in some cases, the 
same object may afford both these pleasures at once. 
What is called the Moral Sublime is a different thing 
altogether. It is merely uncommon virtue. # 

What is common we view with Indifference. But 
when the capacity of Admiration is great and pre- 
dominant, the want and desire of something to gratify 
it produces a pain, usually described as weariness or 
Ennui, and which, in a secondary point of view, is 
correctly enough attributed to the commonness of 
the things about us. 

When we have formed expectations of deriving 
pleasure from certain objects, whether pleasures of 
admiration, or of any other kind, and those objects 
fail to come up to our expectations, there ensues a 
pain of disappointment, then called Contempt, which, 
when it relates to sensitive beings, gives rise to a 
feeling of Malevolence. 

The sentiment of Wonder is the source of that 
pleasure which we derive from the strange and the 
marvellous ; and, as we have seen, of the weariness 
we experience from what is common and vulgar. 

The heightening effect of admiration upon the 
sentiment of benevolence will serve to explain why 

* The subject of beauty and sublimity will be more fully considered 
in the Theory of Taste. 



76 THEORY OF MORALS. 

many acts, not performed nor required towards or- 
dinary persons, are ordinarily demanded, and readily 
performed, nay, even considered as duties, towards 
supposed supernatural beings, and towards persons 
of high rank or distinguished abilities, or who in 
any way have become objects of general admira- 
tion. 

20. What are called Attachments or Friendships , 
that is, a peculiar warmth of benevolence in two 
parties towards each other, depend, in a great degree, 
upon pleasures of one kind or another, which the 
parties mutually derive from each other's company ; 
and which are often involuntarily conferred upon 
both sides. This is so much the case, that attach- 
ments often survive the voluntary and deliberate 
infliction of injuries. In general, however, attach- 
ments depend, in a considerable degree, upon the 
mutual interchange of pleasures voluntarily confer- 
red. Such pleasures are usually called Benefits ; 
and these, in the second place, we proceed to con- 
sider. 

21. That heightening of the sentiment of benevo- 
lence, which is produced towards those who volun- 
tarily confer pleasures upon us, is called Gratitude. 
Gratitude ordinarily produces many actions which 
the unassisted force of the sentiment of benevolence 
will not ordinarily produce ; and therefore, in every 
code of morals, many things are regarded as duties 
towards benefactors, which are not required towards 
men in general. Hence the peculiar duties of chil- 
dren towards their parents, of proteges towards a 
patron, of citizens towards the state, or the duties of 



LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 77 

patriotism, as distinguished from the duties of phi- 
lanthropy, — the state being personified and consid- 
ered capable both of conferring and experiencing 
pains and pleasures, — duties, which, when the su- 
preme power has been concentrated in the hands of 
an individual, have been transferred to that individ- 
ual, and have received the name of Obedience, or 
Political Loyalty ; the non-performance or denial of 
these alleged duties being stigmatized as Treason, or 
Rebellion. 

22. The well known fact that benefits conferred 
tend to heighten benevolence towards him who confers 
them, and so to produce benefits in return, joined to 
the other well known fact that injuries inflicted pro- 
duce, towards him who inflicts them, the sentiment 
of malevolence, and so expose him to suffer injuries 
in his turn, frequently leads men to abstain from in- 
juries, and to confer benefits, from purely selfish mo- 
tives. The general favor which a man acquires to 
himself by the character of a good man, and the 
general disfavor to which a man exposes himself by 
the character of a bad man ; these, with many saga- 
cious persons, furnish in themselves sufficient mo- 
tives for a general conformity to the ordinary rules 
of morality prevailing in the societies to which they 
respectively belong. The observation of this circum- 
stance, joined to some other considerations which we 
have already pointed out, led the old Epicureans, 
and the modern Hobbists, to attempt the explanation 
of the moral phenomena of human nature upon the 
single principle of prudent self-interest. 

With men of naturally cool temperament and su- 
7* 



78 THEORY OF MORALS. 

perior sagacity, and for every-day morals, this Epi- 
curean theory may, perhaps, answer tolerably well. 
And the tendency of moral conduct to promote our 
own selfish interest is a topic of which benevolence 
itself will sanction the frequent use ; since it is ev- 
idently a means, and a powerful means, of procur- 
ing the performance of many beneficial actions. But 
it is in vain to expect from merely selfish motives, 
any great or heroic acts of virtue. # Indeed, even 
with respect to that part of virtue more particularly 
distinguished as prudence, or duties to ourselves, the 
selfish benefits of which are most clearly obvious, it 
is only a few men whom a mere regard for their 
own selfish welfare is able to keep within due 
bounds, — and these are generally men, whose incli- 
nation for imprudent indulgences is naturally weak. 
23. There yet remains to be considered a set of 
pleasures and of corresponding pains, which exercise 
a perpetual and very powerful influence over human 
judgment and conduct, acting sometimes in opposi- 

* The good and wise man of the Epicurean philosophy is very 
well described in the following lines of Pope : 

" With every pleasing, every prudent part, 
Say, what does Cloe want ? She wants a heart. 
She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought, 
But never, never reached one generous thought; 
Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, 
Content to dwell in decencies for ever. . 
So very reasonable, so unmoved, 
As never yet to love, or to be loved." 

Moral Essays, Ep. II. 

It is worthy of remark that the sort of virtue described in these 
lines is the only sort of virtue, which, according to current, and espe- 
cially English notions, is appropriate to the female sex. 



LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 79 

tion to, and sometimes in conjunction with, the senti- 
ment of benevolence. The sensibility in which these 
pleasures and pains originate, strange to say, has no 
specific name in any language of Europe, — a striking 
proof, among many others, how little the language 
of every-day life is adapted to the purposes of scien- 
tific inquiry. We shall call this sensibility the senti- 
ment of Self-comparison. The pains and pleasures to 
be referred to this sentiment are, pains of Inferiority 
and pleasures of Superiority, which pleasures give 
rise to a Desire, commonly called the Love of Supe- 
riority. 

Each individual suffers pain, in a greater or less 
degree, from perceiving himself to be inferior to 
those about him, whether in knowledge, strength, 
ability in general, natural or acquired, agreeable 
qualities, wealth, or, in fact, any one particular in 
which it is possible for one man to be superior to 
another. According to the judgment which he forms 
of his own relative capacity, and according to the 
position in which he stands, each individual selects 
some point or points, in which he thinks himself 
able to excel, and some persons over whom he thinks 
himself able to triumph ; and he consoles himself for 
the inferiority which he is constrained to admit upon 
numerous other points, and as respects numerous 
other individuals, by the enjoyment, or the anticipa- 
tion of superiority on some point, over somebody. 
Nor is this sentiment excited only by a comparison 
between ourselves and other men. We compare 
ourselves with other animals, and even with inani- 
mate objects, and accordingly as we find ourselves 



80 THEORY OF MORALS. 

superior or inferior, we derive pleasure or pain from 
the comparison. 

24. With respect to this sentiment, as with respect 
to every other, habit and the apparent possibility or 
impossibility of its gratification have a very powerful 
influence. As regards those whose superiority over 
us is unquestionable and irreversible, or whose supe- 
riority we have been taught from early childhood to 
regard as unquestionable and irreversible, the pain 
of inferiority is felt in a very slight degree, assuming 
the form of Embarrassment or Bashfulness ; or it 
may be wholly superseded, and displaced by a pleas- 
ure of admiration. It is only with respect to those 
whom we have been accustomed to regard as our 
equals, or inferiors, that this sentiment exercises its 
full force. Hence the hate with which rising talent 
or rising genius is regarded ; hence the dislike of 
new men not less on the part of those from among 
whom they have risen, than on the part of those 
among whom they have placed themselves. 

It is in this sentiment that Pride and Vanity have 
their origin. Pride is a feeling of superiority exhib- 
ited in a man's general manners and bearing, by a 
distance, reserve, and haughtiness towards others, as 
though he were a superior being to them. Vanity 
is the same feeling exhibited in words or actions by 
a constant display of one's self, and a constant celebra- 
tion of one's own excellence. Pride and vanity both 
inflict pain by trenching upon the love of superiority 
in others ; whereas Modesty and Humility flatter 
the love of superiority in others, and give them 
pleasure ; whence they are pronounced good and 



LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 81 

amiable qualities ; that is to say, qualities that give 
pleasure, and which tend to excite a feeling of be- 
nevolence towards those who exhibit them. 

25. Good manners, which have been very prop- 
erly called the " lesser morals," consist, in a great 
measure, in paying deference and respect to others, 
— thus gratifying in them the sentiment of self- 
comparison, and so affording them pleasure. This 
may be done either from benevolent or selfish mo- 
tives. In the former case, it is called gentleness, 
Politeness, good breeding ; in the latter case it is 
called Flattery ; or when it is excessive, and plainly 
intended to secure some benefit to ourselves, through 
the agency of the person flattered, and in conse- 
quence of his benevolence towards us excited by 
means of it, it is stigmatized as Sycophancy. The 
proverbial power of flattery indicates the great and 
general force of that sentiment to which it is ad- 
dressed. 

Those persons who are most universally popular, 
that is, who are regarded with the most general 
favor, and who have the fewest enemies, are those 
over whom the sentiment of benevolence, either from 
their original constitution, their education, or their 
position, exercises influence enough to make them 
uniformly polite and obliging in little matters ; who 
enjoy a good flow of spirits, that is to say, a succes- 
sion of pleasurable ideas, which they have the power 
of communicating to others ; whose talents are but 
ordinary, though their accomplishments are consider- 
able ; and over whom the love of superiority exercises 
but a moderate degree of force. These are what are 



82 THEORY OF MORALS. 

commonly called good, amiable, agreeable, pleasant 
persons. They are general favorites ; but they never 
become objects of that enthusiastic love of which 
admiration is an essential ingredient ; nor do they 
often perform distinguished acts of virtue. 

26. The love of superiority seeks and finds its 
gratification in a vast variety of ways. It is this sen- 
timent combined with certain pleasures of activity, 
that gives a zest to hunting, fishing, war, and all 
the numerous games, whether of skill or chance, in 
which men so generally delight, and the object in all 
which is, to conquer, subdue, or excel. 

It is this sentiment upon which depends the dis- 
tribution of men into ranks and orders ; and hence it 
is that the most trifling circumstance, a title, a place, 
a wreath of leaves, a ribbon, a spangle, may come 
to be regarded as a matter of the utmost importance, 
if it only be converted into a mark of superiority. 
It is this sentiment, also, which makes fame, ap- 
plause, glory, reputation, such objects of pursuit. 

27. But this sentiment finds, perhaps, its fullest 
and most complete gratification in the power of com- 
manding and controlling the actions of others. It is 
to the love of superiority that government owes its 
origin ; for though it be true that government is of 
such obvious utility, and even necessity, that both 
the benevolent and the selfish motives unite to in- 
duce men to submit to it ; yet government existed 
before its utility was ever thought of; and its utility 
only became known in consequence of its prior es- 
tablishment. That desire of authority, distinction, 
and respect, which is displayed by the head of every 



LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 83 

family, — at least by every good head of a family, 
— for mere tenderness and affection uniformly de- 
generate into the most fatal indulgence, — leads to 
the extension of that authority over neighbouring 
families, over tribes, over nations. All government 
is originally monarchic in its character. Projects for 
the distribution and the division of power, aristo- 
cratic and democratic forms of government, are the 
contrivances of later times ; originating, however, in 
that same sentiment, which gives rise to the original 
monarchy ; that sentiment, namely, which makes 
inferiority painful, and superiority pleasurable.* 

28. There is, however, a sort of power, much 
more attainable by men in general, than political 
power, to wit, the power which the possession of 
wealth bestows ; and this power, accordingly, is a 
much more universal object of pursuit. 

Wealth is the possession of the means of enjoying 
many pleasures, and of escaping many pains ; and 
money, which is the representative of wealth, is, 
therefore, sought from a great variety of motives, 
that is to say, through the impulse of a great variety 
of pains and desires. Bat after all, it is the desire of 
superiority which is the great and permanent motive 
for the accumulation of money : — a motive which 
continues to operate after all others have lost their 
force ; and which grows stronger by indulgence, till 
the last moment of life. Hence it happens that in 
communities in which the desire of superiority is 
most fully brought into play,- — countries, for in- 

* This idea will be pursued and developed in the Theory of Politics. 



84 THEORY OF MORALS. 

stance, such as England or America, — money is 
much more keenly, and much more generally pur- 
sued, than in societies in which this sentiment is 
comparatively quiescent. 

29. Political power can seldom be attained, except 
by a great disregard of the pleasures and pains of 
others ; and one of the most common ways of attain- 
ing wealth, is, to attain it at the expense of others, 
by taking from them, by force or fraud, what they 
have ; or by frightening or cheating them into labor 
for our benefit. 

The manifold evils which the desire of political 
power and the pursuit of wealth lead men to inflict 
upon their fellow-men, and the entire triumph which 
these desires obtain so often over the sentiment of 
benevolence, may well account for all the declama- 
tions of moralists against Ambition and Covetousness ; 
and may enable us to understand why some of them 
have denounced the love of power, and the love of 
money, as the roots of all evil. 

30. The desire of superiority, however, that sen- 
timent which is, at times, the most dangerous oppo- 
nent of the sentiment of benevolence, is, at other 
times, its best and firmest ally ; to such an extent, 
that the Stoics built their system of morals almost 
wholly upon it. 

31. According to the Stoics, the pleasure of supe- 
riority is far superior to all other pleasures ; the pain 
of inferiority far greater than all other pains. In 
fact, these are the only pleasures and pains that de- 
serve to be called such ; and no man can be a Stoic 
whose constitution is not conformable to this idea. 



LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 85 

But as virtue is universally esteemed the highest 
attribute of human nature, the highest degree of 
superiority can only be obtained by the highest supe- 
riority in virtue. Therefore, the greatest pleasure 
and the greatest virtue must be coincident. 

Such was the reasoning of the Stoics ; and al- 
though their theory fails entirely to explain the ori- 
gin and nature of moral distinctions ; though it 
neither assists us to ascertain what actions are vir- 
tuous, nor points out the reason why virtue is esteem- 
ed the highest of human attributes, yet it evinces a 
certain insight into the motives of human conduct, 
and into the origin of that pleasure with which the 
performance of virtuous actions is attended. 

32. We have already pointed out how it happens 
that virtue is that quality which enjoys the highest 
esteem among men. To be inferior in that quality 
inflicts a pain ; to be superior in it affords a pleas- 
ure ; which pain and which pleasure are keen in pro- 
portion as the power of moral perception is acute, 
and the desire of superiority strong. The desire of 
superiority, however, as to most matters, is satisfied, 
provided we can attain the level of equality with 
those about us. Except as to some few things, or 
some single thing, in which we may esteem our- 
selves able to excel, it is the pain of inferiority rather 
than the desire of superiority, that impels us ; and it is 
this same pain of inferiority which is a perpetual and 
most efficacious spur to the performance of those ac- 
tions which are esteemed duties. What are called 
duties the performance of which indicates only an 
8 



86 THEORY OF MORALS. 

ordinary degree of virtue, would not, however, be 
ordinarily performed, unless the sentiment of benev- 
olence were reinforced by a pain of inferiority at 
the idea of falling short of others in benevolent acts. 

33. It is also true, that almost all great and heroic 
acts of virtue, especially those which require any 
sustained and prolonged course of action, are, to a 
considerable extent, due to the love of superiority. 
No doubt, for the performance of such actions, a 
nice perception of the difference between right and 
wrong, and a warm love of the right, are absolutely 
necessary ; and these cannot exist without a high 
degree of benevolence. When high acts of virtue 
consist, as they sometimes do, merely in the sacrifice, 
the relinquishment of our own good for the benefit 
of others, a high degree of benevolence may alone 
suffice for the performance of such acts. But when 
exertion, and effort, and labor, and struggle are essen- 
tial towards the production of any great good to 
others, — and few things are accomplished without 
exertion, and effort, and labor, and struggle, — benev- 
olence alone will never suffice ; it must be reinforced 
by the desire of superiority, and that in a high 
degree. 

The same sentiment, indeed, which, under the 
names of the love of power, and the love of money, 
ambition, covetousness, pride, and vanity, has been 
denounced by moralists as worthy of detestation and 
extirpation, and as a plain evidence of human de- 
pravity, has, by the greater part of the same mor- 
alists, —some of the mystical schools excepted, — 
under the names of IS elf -respect. Emulation, Shame, 






LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 87 

Love of Reputation, Love of Fame, Love of Glory 
been extolled as the nurse and tutor of virtue. 

34. And so indeed it is. For what is that ex- 
quisite pleasure, which, under the name of the 
pleasure of virtue, so attracted the fancy of the 
Platonists, and excited the desires of the Stoics ; and 
which has ever been pointed out as one of the great- 
est rewards, if not indeed the only and all-sufficient 
reward, of a virtuous course of conduct ? What is 
it, in a great measure, but a feeling of self-applausa, 
the gratification, in the highest degree, of this same 
love of superiority ? The mere sentiment of benev- 
olence is as much gratified at the sight, or at the 
thought, of a beneficent act done by others, as 
though it were done by ourselves. That which 
gives us an additional and peculiar pleasure when 
the act is our own, is the consciousness that, in doing 
it, we have done more than ordinary men would 
have done, and so have vindicated our title to the 
possession of a superior degree of the highest human 
excellence. That feeling, on the other hand, which 
is called Remorse, when it is any thing more than 
the fear or the apprehension of punishment, that 
gnawing pain which never dies, and which is the 
fearful consequence of crime, is but the conscious- 
ness, that, however we may succeed in concealing it 
from the world, we are, in fact, debased, degraded, 
sunk below the common level. It is sufficiently 
humiliating to lose the esteem of others ; but to lose 
our own esteem is the most terrible of humiliations. 

35. Hence it is that Reproach is so powerful a 
means of impelling to the performance of virtuous 



88 THEORY OF MORALS. 

actions. When we are conscious it is just, it inflicts 
upon ns a pain of inferiority. 

36. There is still another way in which the love 
of superiority concurs in the production of beneficial 
acts. To confer a benefit upon a man gives us a 
certain superiority over him. It lays him under an 
obligation which is stronger in proportion as the 
benefit conferred is greater. Hence the saying, that 
it is more blessed to give than to receive ; hence it 
is that men, in whom the sentiment of Self-compari- 
son is strong, submit with the greatest reluctance to 
ask or to accept a favor ; hence it is that the arro- 
gance, or imagined arrogance, with which a favor is 
conferred, often inflicts such a pain of inferiority, as 
totally to overpower and extinguish the sentiment of 
benevolence, and to create a feeling of hatred in its 
place. 

37. That we derive a certain pleasure from con- 
templating the struggles and distresses of others, is 
a very old observation. Lucretius repeats it at the 
commencement of his second book, 

" Suave mari magno turbantibus a^quora ventis, 
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem; " 

and he truly adds, 

M Non quia vexari quemquam est jocunda voluptas, 
Sed quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave est." 

But, though he alleges the fact, he omits to assign 
the reason why it is pleasant to see evils, from which 
we ourselves are free. The reason is, that it affords 
us a pleasure of superiority. Rochefoucault only 
pressed this observation a little farther, when he 
uttered that celebrated remark, that we find a certain 



LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 89 

degree of pleasure in the misfortunes even of our 
best friends ; a remark which proves that he had 
looked much more deeply, than most of those who 
have criticized him, into the springs of human ac- 
tion. * 

38. It is the gratification of this same sentiment 
of superiority, it is the pleasure of possessing a little 
dominion of his own, where he can rule, and where 
he is chief, where he is looked up to, not with affec- 
tion alone, but with admiration and respect, that has 
a great deal to do with parental love ; which indem- 
nifies every head of a family for the many pains and 
labors to which he is obliged to submit in providing 
for the wants of his household ; and which gives to 
parental tenderness no small portion of its warmth 
and zeal. 

A man's children are something that he has pro- 
duced, or helped to produce. They are living monu- 
ments of his power. They are his ; and often they 
are almost the only things which he can claim as 
his. If they excel, or if he fancies them to excel, in 
beauty, strength, or talent, or in any other particular, 
this excellence of theirs is an additional gratification 
to his love of superiority. Their very weakness and 
helplessness and continual wants, become sources of 
pleasure to him, because they enable him to contem- 



* The same observation, less epigrammatically expressed, is to be 
found in Hobbes, Treatise on Human Nature, Chap. IX. Hobbes was 
so struck by the occasional coincidence of the sentiment of Self- 
comparison with the sentiment of Benevolence, that he denied the 
existence of the latter sentiment at all, and ascribed all beneficial 
actions to the former. See the chapter above referred to. 

8* 



90 THEORY OF MORALS. 

plate the agreeable contrast of his strength, his help- 
fulness, his ability to supply their wants. It is 
chiefly because a man's children are the sources to 
him of these pleasures, that they become such pecu- 
liar objects of his benevolence, and that parents are 
ordinarily ready, and are held bound, to confer an 
infinity of benefits upon their children, and to submit 
to an infinity of pains for their sake. 

39. There is one other means of gratifying the 
desire of superiority, different from all those which 
have been already pointed out ; and that is, by the 
acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge is power. 

There certainly is a pleasure, commonly called the 
pleasure of novelty, but which is, in fact, a pleasure 
of admiration, attendant upon new perceptions and 
conceptions, which makes the whole world so eager 
after what is new. There is also a pleasure, which 
may be denominated pleasure of the rational faculty, 
one of the pleasures of mental activity, which results 
from perceiving the relation of one thing to another. 
But the chief ingredient in what is usually called 
the love or desire of knowledge, is the desire of 
superiority. Knowledge is power;* and that su- 
periority which the office of a teacher or instructor 
implies, is often a sufficient inducement to the pro- 
clamation of newly discovered truths, or supposed 
truths, even when hatred and persecution, and un- 
numbered pains, are certain to be the immediate 
consequences to the promulgator. 

* " Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas ; 
Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum, 
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari." 

Virgil, Geor. II. v. 489. 



LAWS OF EMOTIONS. 91 

40. Generally speaking, the love of knowledge 
leads to the performance of beneficial actions, since 
all have an interest in the advancement of know- 
ledge. Hence it has ordinarily been reckoned by 
moralists a good motive of action. When it takes 
an injurious turn, or one thought to be so, it is stig- 
matized as Inquisitiveness, Impertinent Curiosity, 
or, to use a modern term, Want of Reverence. 

41. We have thus pointed out the operation of the 
sentiment of Self-comparison, when acting in oppo- 
sition to, and conjointly with, the sentiment of Be- 
nevolence. But sometimes it acts in conjunction 
with the sentiment of Malevolence. A superiority 
over me, against which I struggle in vain, and which 
seems likely to be permanent — until I become ac- 
customed to it, and lose all hope, and with hope all 
desire to shake it off — inflicts upon me a pain, which 
makes me hate him who is the cause of it. The 
hatred arising from this particular cause is called 
Envy. The feeling with which we regard those 
who seem likely to obtain a superiority over us, but 
who have not yet fully succeeded in doing so, is 
called Jealousy. As envy and jealousy often lead 
us to depreciate, or to injure, those who are particular 
objects, to the rest of the world, of admiration and 
love, by reason of some good quality in which they 
excel ; hence these feelings are regarded, in a moral 
point of view, as among the worst motives of action. 
All codes of morals, however, make a certain allow- 
ance for the force of these feelings; and they justify, 
in the conduct of rivals towards each other, or pass 
by, with a slight reproach, many injurious actions, 



92 THEORY OF MORALS. 

which between other parties would be held inexcu- 
sable ; while many beneficial acts done towards a 
rival attain a character of extraordinary virtue, call- 
ed Magnanimity, which, but for the circumstance 
of rivalry, would not have been so regarded.* 



CHAPTER III. 

OF CERTAIN QUALITIES OR TEMPERAMENTS CALLED VIR- 
TUES BECAUSE THEY ARE ESSENTIAL TO THE PER- 
FORMANCE OF BENEFICIAL ACTIONS. 

1. Having thus enumerated and separately examin- 
ed the sentiments, that is to say, the sensibilities to 
pleasures and pains, which operate to modify the in- 
fluence of the sentiment of benevolence over human 
judgment and conduct, we now proceed to enume- 
rate and define certain qualities, which are called 
virtues, because without them, the highest degree of 
benevolence will be unproductive in actions benefi- 
cial to others. These qualities are included under 
the head of virtue, because that term is employed to 
describe the entire impulse, whatever it may be, or 
however compounded, upon which the performance 
of beneficial actions depends ; and as, without them, 
beneficial actions cannot be performed, they are nat- 
urally included under the term virtue. 

* Milton's Satan — as Dryden observes, the true hero of Paradise 
Lost is a most splendid personification of the sentiment of Self- 
comparison in all its manifold operations. 



TEMPERAMENTS CALLED VIRTUES. 93 

2. First among these qualities may be mentioned 
Wisdom, otherwise called Prudence, — though this 
latter term is generally employed in a much more 
restricted sense. By wisdom is signified a superior 
knowledge of relations in general. When employed 
in reference to morals, it signifies a superior knowl- 
edge of the relations between actions and human 
happiness ; or, more generally, a superior knowledge 
of those relations upon which human happiness de- 
pends ; without which knowledge it is perfectly 
evident that the most unlimited benevolence may be 
productive only of evil. Wisdom depends upon un- 
usual strength of the rational faculty, conjoined with 
extensive experience. Wisdom, virtue, and under- 
standing have sometimes been confounded together, 
as though they were one and the same thing ; and 
both that theory of morals which makes virtue to 
consist in conformity to absolute relations, or the 
Platonic Theory, and that theory which makes it 
consist in the pursuit of our own highest happi- 
ness, or the Theory of Self-interest well understood, 
have tended to countenance this confusion. 

Let it be observed, however, that on moral ques- 
tions, questions whether such and such actions will 
tend to promote the happiness of others, a strong 
degree of the sentiment of benevolence is absolutely 
essential to a right judgment ; and that all the per- 
spicacity, in the world, if the light of love be want- 
ing, will not prevent us from falling into the most 
ridiculous errors, — errors which a child may de- 
tect. 

3. But it is not enough that we desire the good of 



94 THEORY OF MORALS. 

others, and perceive the true means of accomplishing 
that good. In order to act conformably to that de- 
sire and those perceptions, we must have the cour- 
age to encounter the pains, which, it is possible or 
probable our action may bring upon us, and which, 
the wiser we are, we shall be the more likely to fore- 
see. It often happens that the delights of virtue are 
only to be won by first encountering a host of pains. 
The apprehension of future pains, of whatever kind, 
is a present pain called Fear : and a pain which has 
a vast influence over human conduct. Moral fear, 
that is to say, the fear of moral pain, as it is a great 
preventive to actions injurious to others, and as it 
necessarily implies a certain degree of force in the 
sentiment of benevolence, is esteemed a good qual- 
ity, a virtue ; and so is the fear of shame, or that 
dread of the pain of inferiority, which, as we have 
just now seen, is essential even to ordinary virtue. # 
But fear, in general, that is to 'say, the dread of en- 
countering pain in general, inasmuch as it is almost 
universally an obstacle in the way of beneficial 
action, is esteemed a bad quality, a vice. Courage is 
that constitution of mind which leads men, in pur- 
suit of a pleasure, whether a moral pleasure or any 
other, to encounter pains ; it is that state of mind in 
which pains of desire triumph over pains of antici- 
pation ; and as it is absolutely essential to the per- 
formance of many actions beneficial to others, it 
thence has acquired the character of a virtue. 

*"I dare do all that may become a man, 
Who dares do more, is none." 

Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 7. 



TEMPERAMENTS CALLED VIRTUES. 95 

4. It is necessary, however, carefully to distin- 
guish between the moral approbation which we be- 
stow upon courage, — and which never is bestowed 
except when that quality is contemplated as an aid 
towards actions beneficial to others ; and the admi- 
ration with which extraordinary courage is regarded, 
— a sentiment founded entirely on the fact, that it 
is extraordinary. The sentiment of admiration may, 
and often does, operate to modify our moral judg- 
ments, — of which some extraordinary instances will 
presently be pointed out ; but admiration and moral 
approbation, though often confounded together, are, 
in their nature and origin, totally distinct. 

5. But though courage may suffice to induce us to 
commence a virtuous action, or course of action, in 
spite of the pains with which that action threatens 
us, we need Fortitude to induce us to persevere, 
after those pains of apprehension begin to be realized. 
Courage may owe its origin to ignorance, to thought- 
lessness, to folly ; and it may fail at the very mo-, 
ment when it most is needed. Fortitude, which 
consists in persevering endurance, is the only secu- 
rity we can have for the fulfilment of a virtuous 
intent ; and it has accordingly, in a moral point of 
view, been always ranked as superior to courage. 

6. Both Courage and Fortitude may be considered 
under the twofold aspect of physical courage and 
physical fortitude, moral courage and moral fortitude. 
Physical courage and physical fortitude consist in 
the encounter of such pains as hunger, wounds, and 
bodily torments ending in death. This quality, 
among communities constantly engaged in war, and 



96 THEORY OF MORALS. 

when every man is liable to be called upon at any 
moment to risk his body and his life in the common 
defence, has, for very obvious reasons, been raised to 
the highest rank of virtues. Courage among the 
Romans was virtue par excellence ; and the same 
estimate of it has been transmitted, from barbarous 
and warlike ancestors, to the nations of Modern Eu- 
rope. 

What is called moral courage and moral fortitude, 
consists in enduring, through the force of the moral 
sentiment, those numerous pains which spring from 
the malevolence of others to whom our conduct 
gives offence ; particularly those pains to which we 
are subject through the sentiment of self-comparison, 
pains of obloquy, mortification, and disgrace. 

7. The sentiment of self-comparison often com- 
bines with the sentiment of benevolence to produce 
physical courage and physical fortitude. Whereas, 
in cases requiring moral courage and moral fortitude, 
it often happens that the whole force, or almost the 
whole force, of that powerful sentiment, then called 
false shame , impels the other way. As moral cour- 
age and moral fortitude indicate, in general, a stronger 
force of moral obligation than physical courage and 
physical fortitude, they are, on that account, objects 
of a higher moral approbation ; and as they are more 
rare, they are on, that account, objects also of greater 
admiration. 

8. There is another quality called Constancy, 
Firmness, Steadiness, Perseverance, closely related 
to Fortitude, and, indeed, only a modification of it, 
which is absolutely necessary towards the accom- 



TEMPERAMENTS CALLED VIRTUES. 97 

plishment of any thing that requires continuous ex- 
ertions. This quality results from the continuous 
predominancy of certain pains and desires, and an 
ability to bear certain pains without yielding to 
them. It depends partly on temperament, or consti- 
tution, including the state of health, and partly on 
position. Temper or Self-control falls under this 
head. What is called Patience, is sometimes this 
quality, and is sometimes fortitude, properly so call- 
ed, or a mixture of both. Faithfulness or Fidelity 
is one particular modification of constancy. 

9. But all these means for the production of virtu- 
ous actions must fail to be effectual, unless there be 
added to them a certain Hopefulness, otherwise 
called Confidence, and, by some recent writers, 
Faith ; that is to say, a certain persuasion that we 
shall be able to accomplish the beneficial objects at 
which we aim. To point out the origin, nature, and 
modifications of this Hopefulness, or Faith, would 
lead us into some curious and important inquiries, 
which, however, would be foreign to the immediate 
objects of this Treatise. This Hopefulness or Faith, 
being essential to actions beneficial to others, is 
esteemed a virtue, and the want of it is stigmatized 
as a vice, under the names of Doubtfulness, Despond- 
ency, Skepticism. Doubt is painful in itself ; it 
produces a pain of inferiority, and is shunned on that 
account. Confidence, or Faith, is in itself a pleasura- 
ble feeling, a pleasure of certainty, a pleasure of su- 
periority, and on that account is sought and desired. 
Hopefulness is often carried to a degree which leads 
to absurd and impracticable enterprises, and makes 
9 



98 THEORY OF MORALS. 

us exhaust our energies to no purpose. It is then no 
longer a virtue, but a vice, and is stigmatized as 
blind, irrational Folly and Credulity. A rational 
confidence is commonly implied in the use of the 
word, Wisdom. 

10. But Benevolence, though seconded by all the 
qualities heretofore enumerated, must still fail to be 
productive in virtuous acts, unless there be added to 
it a certain degree of Activity, or inclination to act. 
Activity is of two sorts, muscular and mental, each 
head embracing many varieties. It depends upon 
the relative force of the pleasures of activity, through 
which men find a certain enjoyment in action inde- 
pendent of any of its other consequences either to 
themselves or others, and of the pains of activity, — 
those pains which flow from every kind of action, 
when continued beyond a period greater or less. 
All this depends very much upon the state of the 
body as regards sickness or health ; and to a certain 
degree, also, on original temperament ; but much 
more upon habit. That degree of exertion which 
gives pleasure to a man in health accustomed to it, 
is absolutely intolerable to a sick man, or to one 
unaccustomed to it. 

The influence of bodily health upon moral char- 
acter is a most important matter, which of late years 
is beginning to attract the attention it deserves. It 
affects, to a greater or less degree, all our capacities 
of pain and pleasure ; and so influences our whole 
course of conduct. 

Activity is so essential to virtuous actions, that the 
want of it, under the names of Sloth, Indolence, 



TEMPERAMENTS CALLED VIRTUES. 99 

Idleness, has been stigmatized as a vice, the parent 
of all the other vices ; while activity, under the 
name of Industry, has been commended as the nurse 
of all the virtues. 

11. But Benevolence, Wisdom, Courage, Forti- 
tude, Constancy, Hopefulness, and disposition to act, 
all combined, are yet of no avail to produce actions 
beneficial to others, without Strength, Capacity, or 
Ability to act. Mental ability is indeed included and 
implied in Wisdom. But even bodily strength was 
reckoned a virtue by the ancients ; and all codes of 
morals enjoin the duty of preserving one's health ; a 
duty which owes its origin in part to the fact, that a 
certain degree of health is essential to ability bodily 
or mental, and that a certain degree of bodily and 
mental ability is essential to action of any kind, and 
of course to virtuous action. The duty of pre- 
serving one's health depends also in part upon the 
fact, that ill health, by exposing us to the constant 
influence of certain bodily pains, tends thereby to 
diminish the force of the sentiment of benevolence. 

12. But let it always be borne in mind, that all 
the preceding qualities, Wisdom, Courage, Fortitude, 
Constancy, Hopefulness, Activity, and Ability, only 
attain the character of virtues, by reason of a certain 
degree of benevolence, which is supposed to be 
joined with them. When any of these qualities 
exist, unattended by the ordinary force of the senti- 
ment of Benevolence, they are no longer virtues, but 
vices. They are then called Craft* Audacity, In- 

* Wisdom and Craft were originally used indifferently, to indicate 
a superior degree of knowledge and sagacity. Wisdom is now re- 



100 THEORY OF MORALS. 

sensibility ', Obstinacy, Credulity, Restlessness, Brute 
force. These qualities, therefore, in point of fact, 
are, in their own nature, morally indifferent ; and 
they only come to be considered as morally good or 
morally bad, that is, to assume the character of 
Virtues, or Vices, accordingly as, being conjoined 
with, or dissevered from, the sentiment of benevo- 
lence, they operate towards the production of bene- 
ficial or injurious actions. 



CHAPTER IV. 

DEFINITIONS OF VIRTUE. 

1. We may now be able to understand why all 
attempts hitherto made to give a definition of Virtue 
have failed. Those attempts have proceeded upon 
the supposition, that what is meant by the word 
Virtue is a simple, identical thing. Whereas, under 
that term, in its more general sense, is included all 
that part of human nature which cooperates in im- 
pelling and enabling men to perform actions bene- 
ficial to others ; first, the pains and pleasures of 
benevolence ; secondly, certain impulses of the pains 
and pleasures of self-comparison ; thirdly, those pains 
and pleasures of anticipation included under the 
heads of the fear of punishment and the hope of 

stricted to signify knowledge and sagacity employed for good ends, 
while Craft is employed to designate knowledge and capacity em- 
ployed for bad ends. 



DEFINITIONS OF VIRTUE. 101 

reward ; and fourthly, all those temperaments indi- 
cated by the epithets Wisdom, Courage, Fortitude, 
Constancy, Hopefulness, Activity, and Ability.* 

2. The term, Virtue, however, is most commonly 
used in a somewhat more limited sense ; including 
only those impulses — part of them impulses of be- 
nevolence, and part impulses of the sentiment of self- 
comparison — whereby men are induced to confer 
benefits upon others, without the expectation of any 
reward beyond that which arises from the conscious- 
ness of having conferred them. This last is the 
proper moral sense of the word Virtue ; and actions 
having this origin are called Disinterested Actions. 

3. The forensic supporters of the disinterested 
theory of morals, seizing upon the pains and pleas- 
ures of benevolence, and totally disregarding all the 
other sources of beneficial actions, defined virtue to 
be, Benevolence, or the Love of Man ; while the 
mystical supporters of that theory, looking to a per- 
sonal deity as the true and exclusive object of 
the sentiment of benevolence, defined virtue to be, 
Love of God. Both agree in declaring that Virtue 
and Disinterestedness are synonymous terms ; a pro- 
position generally so interpreted by those who have 
laid it down, as to make virtue consist in perpetual 
self-sacrifice; a thing which all men admire, and 
which a few may attempt ; which, as to isolated acts, 
may be, and constantly is, accomplished ; but which, 
regarded as the sole rule of life, is utterly impracticable. 

* In its most general sense, Virtue signifies the power of giving 
pleasure. Thus we speak of the virtues of minerals and herbs. When 
applied to man, however, its most general sense is that above stated. 

9* 



102 THEORY OF MORALS. 

4. The Stoics, directing their attention exclusively 
to the remarkable influence of the sentiment of self- 
comparison, in producing beneficial actions, defined 
virtue to be Greatness of Mind, superiority to vul- 
gar pains and vulgar pleasures. ' This definition, 
like that of the self-sacrificing moralists, made virtue 
either wholly impracticable, or practicable only for a 
few. 

5. The Epicureans, Hobbists, and those mystic 
doctors who adopted the selfish theory of morals, 
wishing to bring Virtue within the reach of the mul- 
titude, and perceiving the influence of punishments 
and rewards in producing beneficial actions, seized 
upon that as the essence of Virtue, which they de- 
clared to consist in the pursuit of our own highest 
happiness. Descending' to particulars, Hobbes main- 
tained that doing right consisted merely in obedience 
to the civil magistrate. For, according to him, 
peace, which is the greatest of blessings, and abso- 
lutely essential to the happiness and even the exist- 
ence, of man, can only be secured by entire submis- 
sion and implicit obedience to existing authority ; 
whence political obedience becomes the great duty 
of man, including every other. The mystics of this 
school, as they referred all events to the will of God, 
held that happiness could only be attained by se- 
curing God's favor, and they consequently declared 
that Virtue consisted not in political but in religious 
obedience, in fear of God, perfect submission to his 
commands, and total devotion to his will.* 



* The modern sect, of Non-resistants, starting with the same adora- 
tion of peace, as the great panacea of all evils, which Hobbes enter- 



DEFINITIONS OF VIRTUE. 103 

The more exigent of the mystic doctors, and those 
who applied most thoroughly to the Deity the theory 
of pure selfishness, were soon led to perceive the 
total impracticability, as men are naturally consti- 
tuted, of any such perfect obedience on the part of 
man, as pure selfishness on the part of the Deity 
would oblige him to require. They taught, in con- 
sequence, that to the natural man Virtue is impossi- 
ble ; that by nature men are totally depraved ; and 
that goodness can only be implanted in the heart 
by a special interposition of divine power, vouch- 
safed only to an elect few. Thus, again, the par- 
tisans of this school closed that broad door which 
the selfish theory had opened to all men, and, like 
the Stoics and the partisans of self-sacrifice, again 
made Virtue possible only to a select few. It is this 
appeal to the love of superiority, which has tended 
to secure for all these exclusive theories a certain 
number of followers, who delight themselves with 
the idea, that they alone are capable of Virtue, and 
that all other men are naught. 

Helvetius and Bentham, the advocates of interest 
well understood, and of the greatest happiness of 
the greatest number, made an ingenious but desper- 
ate attempt to amalgamate together the doctrines of 
pure selfishness and entire self-sacrifice. When pushed 

tained, have differed from him in substituting a passive non-resistance 
in place of that active obedience which he inculcated. In this point 
vhey agree with Grotius, whose love of peace made him an advocate 
for that absolute power by which he himself suffered so much. They 
differ, too, from Hobbes in this, that, with all the merit which they 
ascribe to non-resistance, they do not make it the sole virtue ; and so 
far from thinking government the foundation of morals, they de- 
nounce all government as wrong. 



104 THEORY OF MORALS. 

to extremity, they are driven into the paradox, that 
pure selfishness may require of us the entire sacrifice 
of ourselves for the benefit of others. 

6. The Platonists, ancient and modern, perceiving 
that every moral judgment includes the perception of 
a certain relation between acts done, and the conse- 
quences of those acts to the happiness of others and 
ourselves, vaguely define Virtue to consist in con- 
formity to absolute relations, that is, the absolute 
nature of things ; a definition easy to repeat, but more 
difficult to understand, and far more comprehensive 
than the thing which it attempts to define. 

7. Aristotle, and his followers, brought this defi- 
nition down from the clouds, and gave it a subjective 
character and a practical application. They defined 
Virtue to consist in conformity to the nature of 
man; a habit of mediocrity according to right rea- 
son. We have shown, in another place,* that this 
definition includes only ordinary virtue. It has, 
however, the advantage, like the definition given by 
the forensic partisans of the selfish theory, of making 
Virtue a thing possible for all men. 

8. All the above definitions are true to a certain 
extent. Except the Platonic, they fail in not being 
sufficiently comprehensive ; they fall into the com- 
mon error of mistaking a part for the whole. The 
Platonic definition has the opposite fault of including 
too much. 

* See Chap. I. § 71, note. 



MORAL OBLIGATION, DUTY, MERIT. 105 



CHAPTER V. 

OF MORAL OBLIGATION, DUTY, RIGHTS, RESPONSIBILITY, 
MERIT, DEMERIT, PUNISHMENTS, AND REWARDS. 

1. The preceding investigations have prepared us 
to understand the origin and application of the terms 
Moral Obligation, Duty, Rights, Responsibility, 
Merit, Demerit, Punishments, and Rewards, terms 
which have given rise to infinite disputes among 
philosophers, and which stand for notions that have 
never yet been thoroughly analyzed, and fully ex- 
plained. 

2. Moral Obligation is that which binds, compels, 
or obliges men to do certain moral acts, that is, 
certain acts beneficial to others. It receives the 
name by way of analogy to physical obligation, as 
when a man is bound by a rope, and dragged along 
by some external force. All the terms employed in 
describing mental operations originate in similar anal- 
ogies. Moral obligation differs, however, from phys- 
ical compulsion, in the circumstance, that the force 
described by it is not an external, but an internal 
force, to wit, the force of the sentiment of benevo- 
lence, modified by the force of the other sentiments 
above pointed out as cooperating with it in the produc- 
tion of disinterested beneficial actions ; in other words, 
the force of Moral Sentiment ; by which phrase the 
compound force that impels to the performance of dis- 
interested beneficial actions, is commonly described. 
Whatever a man does by the force of moral obliga- 






■ 



106 THEORY OF MORALS. 

tion, or in other words, by the impulse of Moral 
Sentiment, he does voluntarily and spontaneously, 
from the inward force of moral motives determining 
his action. 

3. Mental compulsion consists in presenting to a 
man, as inducements to do a certain act, certain 
pleasures and certain pains, such as, according to the 
average operation of human motives, will prevail 
upon him to do that act; such motives, so presented, 
in ordinary cases, creating a mental necessity of so 
acting. 

The phrases Mental Compulsion and Mental Ne- 
cessity are here used instead of the common phrase 
Moral Necessity, in order to avoid the ambiguity 
which arises from employing the epithet Moral in 
two different senses. Moral Obligation designates 
only that necessity of acting, which arises from the 
force of the moral sentiment; whereas Moral Neces- 
sity is used in opposition to Physical Necessity, to 
signify that necessity of acting which arises from the 
force of any, or all the sentiments. These two dif- 
ferent uses of the same word, in immediate juxta- 
position, lead to unavoidable confusion. Both uses 
of the word, however, are justified by its original 
sense ; and, indeed, the one is only a limitation of 
the other. Moral is customary ; moral necessity is 
customary necessity ; moral obligation is that cus- 
tomary necessity which impels men to do disinter- 
ested beneficial actions. The first use of the word 
implies all customary methods of acting ; the second 
use of it is limited to one particular kind of custo- 
mary acts. Some writers, to avoid the ambiguity 



MORAL OBLIGATION, DUTY, MERIT. 107 

here pointed out, have employed the phrase, philo- 
sophical necessity, but the term, mental necessity, 
seems preferable. 

4.» It is perfectly evident that all actions of what- 
ever kind must originate in mental necessity.* Hu- 
man actions, like other natural phenomena, are gov- 
erned by certain natural laws ; and in accordance 
with those laws, a certain preponderating force of 
motives being given, a certain course of action must 
of necessity follow ; indeed, without such necessity, 
there would and could be no action at all. 

5. Now so far as the motives upon which disinter- 
ested actions beneficial to others depend, or what is 
called Moral Sentiment, operate, in general, upon 
human conduct, such and no other, is the extent and 
force of moral obligation in general. 

6. In any given community, the average force of 
the motives, which produce disinterested actions ben- 
eficial to others, will fix the standard of moral obli- 
gation in that community. 

7. As regards particular individuals, the standard 
of moral obligation as respects them will depend upon 
the force over their individual conduct, of Moral Sen- 
timent, as compared with the force of the other sen- 
timents ; and of course it will be very different in 
different individuals. One man will find himself 
morally obliged, bound, and compelled to do many 
things, which another finds himself under no neces- 
sity of doing at all. 

* All metaphysicians of the slightest reputation, ancient or modern, 
have agreed upon this point, — almost the only one upon which they 
have agreed. 



108 THEORY OF MORALS. 

8. Those actions which in any given community 
the average force of moral obligation produces, are 
held in that community to be Duties, which all men 
are expected, and are esteemed bound, to perform, 
because all men are expected to have an average 
share of moral sentiment ; and for the fulfilment of 
that expectation which they raise by the very fact 
of having the form of men, they are held answer- 
able. 

9. Correlative to every duty, there is a Right 
on the part of those individuals towards whom the 
duty ought to be performed. 

10. The non-fulfilment of this expectation, the 
non-performance of duties, indicates Demerit : that 
is to say, a want of ordinary benevolence ; or a more 
than ordinary deficiency of those qualities which 
cooperate with benevolence to produce actions bene- 
ficial to others, or both. This deficiency causes the 
delinquent party to be pronounced vicious : and pre- 
sents him to us as an object of distrust and dislike, 
as one who may probably inflict injuries upon us in- 
dividually, and as certain to inflict moral pain upon 
us, by inflicting injuries upon others. 

11. Thus the non-performance of duties produces 
in us- a sentiment of moral pain, to which, in refer- 
ence to the party causing it, we give the name of 
Disapprobation; and in consequence *of that pain, 
there is excited in us a sentiment of malevolence 
towards the delinquent party, whereby the infliction 
of injuries upon him, in return for the injuries he has 
inflicted upon others, assumes the character of Pun- 
ishment ; which, so long as it does not exceed a cer- 



MORAL OBLIGATION, DUTY, MERIT. 109 

tain limit, gives us not only a pleasure of malevo- 
lence, but a moral pleasure also. What that limit 
may be, depends upon a variety of circumstances ; 
partly upon the force and direction of the sentiment of 
benevolence ; and partly upon the judgment we may 
form as to the likelihood that the punishment will 
reform the guilty person, or otherwise deter him, or 
others, from future like breaches of duty. 

12. It must, however, be observed that when the 
injurious act becomes extraordinary, so as to imply an 
extraordinary degree of sagacity, address, courage, 
fortitude, firmness, or ability, there at once arises a 
pleasurable sentiment of admiration, which, unless 
it be overpowered by fear that this extraordinary 
capacity may be employed for our own individual 
injury, goes a great way to neutralize the pain of 
moral disapprobation, and makes us proportionably 
much more indulgent to great villains than to small 
ones ; an anomaly which moralists, hitherto, have 
been very much puzzled to explain. When the ob- 
ject of moral disapprobation displays, at the same 
time, a general littleness of understanding and capa- 
city, he becomes thereby an object not only of 
disapprobation, but also of contempt, — a painful 
sensation in itself, and an additional cause of ma- 
levolence ; which explains the greater proportional 
acrimony felt against little villanies. 

13. When a man goes beyond the limit of mere 
duty, and performs actions beneficial to others which 
are not expected of him, because men in general, in 
his situation, do not perform them, he is presented 
to us in a pleasurable light, and becomes an object 

10 



110 THEORY OF MORALS. 

of moral approbation. We see in him the proba- 
ble cause of extraordinary pleasures to ourselves, 
exclusive of moral pleasure ; and the certain cause 
of moral pleasure by reason of beneficial actions 
done to others ; and the stronger our sentiment of 
benevolence is, the greater will be the delight which 
such a man will cause us ; in other words, the 
stronger will be our feeling of approbation. As such 
a man causes us pleasure, he becomes thereby pecu- 
liarly an object of our benevolence ; and the more 
extraordinary his virtue is, and the more extraordi- 
nary are the acts which it prompts him to perform, 
in the same proportion is our benevolence towards 
him augmented by the addition of a pleasure of ad- 
miration. This in the object is what is called Merit 
or Desert ; such a man is meritorious or deserving ; 
in other words we are under a mental necessity of 
admiring and loving him ; and not to do so, would 
imply a deficiency in us, of the ordinary force of 
moral sentiment. Merit, in a general sense, is any 
thing which tends to augment our benevolence to- 
wards a man, and to render him peculiarly an object 
of our regard ; that is to say, any qualities he may 
have, which are the causes of pleasure to us. But 
in moral disquisitions, this word is employed exclu- 
sively to signify those qualities which make men 
objects of moral approbation. 

14. Whenever the augmented benevolence caused 
by merit exists, we are impelled by the force of 
moral obligation to confer benefits upon the object of 
it ; which benefits bear the name of Rewards. That 
vice ought to be punished, that virtue ought to be re- 



MORAL OBLIGATION, DUTY, MERIT. Hi 

warded, that duty ought to be performed, — these 
are but phrases for indicating that force of moral 
obligation which makes an ordinary part of human 
nature, and which, if not counteracted by the force 
of other motives, always will determine human con- 
duct. 

15. The mystic hypothesis has involved all this 
subject of moral obligation, duty, merit, responsibili- 
ty, punishments and rewards in entangled contradic- 
tions from which the adherents of that hypothesis 
have found it impossible to escape ; a confusion 
which has given birth to unnumbered volumes of 
abstruse, but barren and inconclusive controversy, 
and has caused mental and moral philosophy, under 
the name of theological metaphysics, to be regarded 
as a fruitless and tantalizing study, leading to noth- 
ing but pains of doubt, and fit to form part of the 
punishment of the damned.* 

16. Instead of looking upon man, such as, in fact, 
he presents himself to us, as a being possessing in 
himself an original spontaneous power of action, 
operating according to uniform laws, the Mystics, 
relying upon analogies already pointed out, regard 
man as a machine, a creature, the handiwork of a 
personal, mechanical God, dependent upon his con- 
structor for all the powers of action which he pos- 



* " Others apart, sat on a hill retired, 

In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high, 
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, 
And found no end in wandering mazes lost" 

Paradise Lost, Book II. v. 588. 



112 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



sesses ; just as men make puppets, and move them 
by inserting a spring, or pulling a wire. 

These same analogies lead straight to the conclu- 
sion, that the apparent acts of men are, in fact, not 
their acts, but the acts of him who made men, and 
by whose perpetual sustaining energy, men exist and 
act. But as all the acts of God are of necessity 
assumed to be right, he himself, by the mystic hy- 
pothesis, being the very cause and substance of all 
things, and of right among the rest, therefore all acts 
performed by God through the agency of men, are 
right ; whatever is, is right ; all human acts are 
right ; and the idea that there is or can be, any such 
thing as wrong or evil in that universe which the 
all perfect and omnipotent God makes and sustains 
is an impious delusion. # 

This paradox, — the obvious and unavoidable con- 
sequence of the mystic hypothesis when fairly car- 
ried out, — this denial of all difference between 
good and evil, right and wrong, is so abhorrent to 
common sense and moral sentiment, that of all Eu- 
ropean mystics, Spinosa alone has had the candor to 
admit, and the courage to embrace it. The rest, un- 



* Such is the substance of many Oriental, Gnostic creeds. Several 
texts of the Jewish and Christian scriptures appear to teach this doc- 
trine. Malebranche, though he rejected the consequences, yet held to 
the principle ; and Leibnitz did but repeat the same thing under a 
new form of words, in his theory of " the best of all possible worlds." 
The same doctrine may be found elegantly stated and argued by the 
joint labors of Pope and Bolingbroke, in the first epistle of the Essay 
on Man ; and it passes current among many who are familiar neither 
with poets nor metaphysicians, under the familiar pious exclamation, 
" All 's for the best ! " 



MORAL OBLIGATION, DUTY, MERIT. 113 

willing to accept the logical results of their own 
hypothesis, and notwithstanding those results, un- 
willing to abandon it, have long and vainly struggled 
to explain the existence of evil, and to find out some 
basis, consistent with the mystic hypothesis, on 
which duty and responsibility might be made to 
rest. 

17. There is no part of the history of opinions 
more curious or remarkable, than the celebrated and 
protracted controversy, to which these attempts have 
given rise ; and which, under various names, Pelagian, 
Semi-Pelagian, Molinist, Arminian, Jansenist, So- 
cinian. Rationalist, Universalist, so long divided, and 
still divides, the Christian world. This vast dispute, 
which seems, at first sight, a hopelessly inextricable 
wilderness of metaphysical subtleties, admits of being 
looked at from three distinct points of view, seen 
from which it assumes a certain degree of order, and 
becomes capable of being comprehended and under- 
stood. 

18. In its first aspect, it is a controversy as to the 
origin of human action between those thorough and 
consistent adherents of the mystic hypothesis who 
explain all the phenomena of the universe, and hu- 
man action among the rest, as immediate results of 
God's volitions, and those various sects of Semi- 
mystics, who, following the philosophers, have grad- 
ually more and more introduced into the theory of 
the universe, and of human nature as a part of it, in 
place of God's volitions, fixed, uniform, natural laws, 
and the spontaneity of man as one of those laws. 

Thus, one party, in logical conformity to the mystic 
10* 






114 THEORY OF MORALS. 



hypothesis, holding God to be the sole source and 
only efficient cause of all action, and regarding man 
as a mere puppet, peremptorily deny that man pos- 
sesses any freedom of will , or, properly speaking, any 
will at ail, for the very idea of will implies free- 
dom. In place of spontaneity they substitute fate, 
predestination, fore-ordination, or what Leibnitz 
called preestablished harmony. It is not man who 
acts, but God who acts by him, and in him. 

The theologians who maintained this view, made 
it the foundation of the celebrated doctrine of man's 
inability, the doctrine, that is, that man, in himself, 
is totally incapable of any good act, any good he 
may do being regarded as the act of God working in 
him, — they denied the existence or possibility of 
any such thing as human merit, and represented 
good works as of no avail whatever towards pleasing 
or propitiating God — or rather so far as man alone 
is concerned, they held good works to be non-exist- 
ent, and impossible ; they taught the doctrine of 
salvation by grace alone, meaning by grace, special, 
undeserved favor extended to an elect few. # The 



* Such was the doctrine of St. Austin, St. Thomas Aquinas, Lu- 
ther, Calvin, Knox, Arnauld, Pascal, and of many other celebrated 
theologians. This doctrine was embodied in all the early Protestant 
symbols, and became, in fact, the basis of the reformation, the great point 
of controversy between the early Protestants and the Church of Rome. 
It is little wonderful, that, after the first burst of the reformation was 
over, the Catholics began to regain their lost ground, and came near 
extinguishing the Protestant religion. From the turn the controversy 
took, the Catholics had not only superstition, tradition, authority, and 
custom on their side, but common sense, and common humanity also. 
The doctrine of salvation by grace alone still remains, verbally , the 
orthodox creed of most of the Protestant churches. But the spirit 
long ago departed. 






MORAL OBLIGATION, DUTY, MERIT. 115 

slightest regard to consistency would have required 
them to admit, what, however, they strenuously 
rejected, that, if there be no such thing as human 
merit, then human demerit is equally a chimera ; 
and the notions of duty, responsibility > and punish- 
ment quite as unfounded as that of reward. 

19. Perceiving that the pure mystic hypothesis is 
totally inconsistent with man's moral nature, the 
Semi-mystics attempted to escape, or rather to cover 
up, this inconsistency, by gradually introducing into 
their theological creeds the philosophical idea of the 
spontaneity of man. They began with maintaining, 
that, although the human will be quite incapable of 
producing any good act without the prompting, 
exciting, cooperating efficacy of divine grace, yet 
still the performance of a good act does imply a 
certain spontaneous effort on the part of man. Hav- 
ing once admitted the idea of this spontaneity, as a 
necessary foundation on which to rest duty, merit, 
and demerit, they have been compelled, for the same 
reasons, more and more to bring it forward, as the 
sole origin of human action ; till, so far as relates to 
human action, they have substantially abandoned, 
though they may still verbally retain, the mystic 
hypothesis, exalting works till they have annihilated 
grace. They have thus succeeded in making their 
theology consistent with moral sentiment ; but they 
have so succeeded only by rejecting the very funda- 
mental proposition of theology ; so that, in point of 
consistency, they have as little to boast as their 
opponents.* 

* The pure mystic hypothesis, notwithstanding its, total inconsis- 
tency with human nature, is so short a cut to the explanation of 






116 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



20. The second and third aspects of this great 
theological controversy have a very intimate relation 
to the first, and to each other* They embrace the 
questions of the moral characters respectively of God 
and of man. But as men necessarily make God after 
their'own image, the moral character which they as- 
cribe to God is necessarily dependent upon their ideas 
of the moral character of man. Hence the second and 
third aspects of this controversy do but present the dis- 
pute respecting the origin, nature, or law, of moral dis- 



all things, and so well suited to excite and gratify the sentiment of 
admiration, that it has always been a great favorite with cloistered 
and closet theorists. Hence those pantheistic systems, ancient and 
modern, Oriental and Occidental, constantly reproduced under slight 
changes of expression, w T hich confound God and nature, and reduce 
every thing to unity and infinity. Nothing, say the mystics, exists 
absolutely but God. It follows that all apparent existences are but 
manifestations of God, God under special forms. This appears to be 
substantially the doctrine of Schelling, at present patronized by the 
king of Prussia and by the conservative politicians and orthodox theo- 
logians of his dominions. 

But even into closets and cloisters philosophical ideas will creep. 
From the united idea of God and nature, if the absolute existence of 
nature be expunged, why not also the 'absolute existence of God ? 
Pushing the subjective doctrine to extremes, these pantheistic theorists 
arrive at the conclusion, that nothing exists absolutely, — that both 
God and nature are but conceptive emanations from the intelligent, 
conscious I. Such, in substance, appears to be the doctrine of Fichte, 
carried out by Hegel, and at present so popular with the liberal party 
of Germany. The doctrine of Schelling, as it reduces the individual 
almost or quite to nothing, is naturally patronized by kings. The 
other doctrine, which makes the individual every thing, is naturally 
more agreeable to subjects. Such is the political condition of Ger- 
many, that its thinkers are obliged to discuss the most important prac- 
tical questions under vague, mystic, abstract, almost unintelligible 
forms. It is childish for those not subject to the same necessity, to 
affect the same disguise, which none can wear without danger of de- 
ceiving others, if not themselves. 



MORAL OBLIGATION, DUTY, MERIT. 117 

tinctions, transferred from morals to theology ; and 
we may arrange the whole body of the disputants 
into three great schools, according to the theory of 
morals which they respectively adopt. 

21. The partisans of the selfish theory of morals, 
among whom must be reckoned most of those who 
deny the freedom of the human will, framing their 
image of God in consistence to that theory, taught 
that God created man solely to promote his own 
pleasure and glory. Having made man for that pur- 
pose, God expects and demands its fulfilment. It is 
men's duty to satisfy that expectation, to comply 
with that demand. Such as do not fulfil and com- 
ply, become, in consequence, chargeable with demerit, 
the proper objects of God's wrath — commonly dis- 
guised under the epithet of justice ; and deserve, 
and will receive, on account of their disobedience 
and rebellion, misery here and eternal damnation 
hereafter. 

Such was the foundation upon which these doc- 
tors attempted to rest the idea of duty, responsibility, 
and punishment. But they still rejected the notion 
of merit, or reward. For as man's utmost efforts 
cannot go beyond the fulfilment of his bare duty, 
which requires that every thought, word, and deed 
should be devoted to God's glory and pleasure, there- 
fore, even in perfect obedience there can be no such 
thing as merit ; and if God choose to confer any 
benefits, here or hereafter, upon any number of men, 
large or small, it is not a right of theirs ; it is not a 
reward ; but free grace and pure gratuity, demanding 
of the favored the most devout gratitude. 



118 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



Bat is man naturally capable either of obedience 
or of gratitude ? Here intervenes the question as to 
the moral character of man ; a matter as to which 
this theory seems at total variance with itself ; for 
if men were created by God to promote his pleasure, 
are we not justified in concluding that they do pro- 
mote his pleasure? Are we to suppose that God 
failed in accomplishing the end at which he aimed? 
If he has accomplished it, must not every thing men 
do be right in his eyes ? So far as he is concerned, 
can there be any such thing as demerit, or any jus- 
tice in punishment ? 

To escape that negative answer to these interro- 
gations which their theoretical theology imperatively 
demanded, and to account for that universal state of 
rebellion against God, which, according to these 
theologians, actually prevails among men, they fled 
from metaphysic to Scripture, and, abandoning argu- 
ment, required us to believe, on authority, in direct 
contradiction to their own arguments, that God, for 
his own glory, in order to make manifest his infinite 
grace, though he made the first human pair pure, 
holy, free, and capable of perfect obedience to his 
will, yet suffered them to be seduced by the Devil — 
who, in this seduction, is represented sometimes as 
the instrument and servant of God, and at others, as 
an independent, or almost independent, power, the 
malignant enemy of man, the prince of this world, 
having more influence over its affairs than even the 
Deity himself, — in consequence of which seduction, 
the first human pair, and their posterity to the end 
of time, lost their freedom of will, fell from their 



MORAL OBLIGATION, DUTY, MERIT. 119 

original pure and holy state, became totally depraved, 
and incapable, and not only incapable, but positively 
disinclined to fulfil the object of their creation ; so 
that, instead of doing God's pleasure, all men, ex- 
cept an elected and predestined few, who, by the 
influence of irresistible grace, undergo a miraculous 
change of heart, are constantly employed, and find a 
pleasure, in inflicting pain upon God. They hate 
God ; and so, in their turn, are proper objects of his 
hatred : and, except the elect, who are saved not by 
any merit of their own, but out of mere grace, will 
be justly damned to all eternity. . So great, indeed, 
has the demerit of man thus become, that it was 
only by assuming a human shape, and, as Jesus, 
dying himself upon the cross, that God has so far 
satisfied his own infinite justice, as to be able, out of 
pure grace, to save some few. 

Thus was derived corroboration from Scripture to 
the scholastic doctrine of salvation by grace alone ; 
and also to the doctrine of the mere uselessness and 
inefiicacy, theologically considered, of good works. 
Indeed these theologians held, that what might seem 
to be good works, in the unregenerate non-elect, 
were a mere delusion ; that really good works could 
be performed only by the elect. But even in them 
they were a sign, not a means ; since resulting from 
irresistible grace, they implied no merit ; the only 
merit being the merit of God, voluntarily dying, as 
Jesus, on the cross. 

22. All who had not made a total sacrifice of 
reason on the altar of faith ; even those who, though 
sacrificing reason, felt benevolence active in their 



120 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



hearts, started back, the rational with incredulity, 
the benevolent with horror, from a doctrine highly 
gratifying, no doubt, to the sentiment of self-compari- 
son, in the self-complacent few, who believe them- 
selves the precious elect, alone capable of goodness 
here or happiness hereafter, and calculated to produce 
in such an enraptured exhilaration ; but a horrible 
doctrine indeed for the doubting and the timid, to 
whom it presents the Deity as an object not of hope 
and love, but of terror and aversion, and whom, under 
this image of him, as if to give corroboration to the 
doctrine, they find themselves compelled to hate. 

These and those who spoke for them protested 
against this representation of the divine character 
as false and impious ; and the idea of the Deity 
has been variously remodelled by a variety of sects, 
who, framing their image of God according to their 
several views of the nature of virtue, have given to 
the attribute of benevolence a greater or less ex- 
tension. 

In admitting the salvation of any, however few 
the number, those who made the doctrine of pure 
selfishness the basis of their theology, yielded to 
their opponents an irrecoverable advantage. The 
very idea of grace, which is only another word for 
benevolence, is inconsistent with the doctrine of pure 
selfishness ; and the notion of grace once admitted, 
why limit it to a few, why not extend it to all ? For 
to say that God's sacrifice of himself is not sufficient 
to atone for the sins of all, is to exalt the attribute 
of infinite justice above that of infinite power. 

But is it necessary to rest the salvation of men 



MORAL OBLIGATION, DUTY, MERIT. 121 

upon grace alone ? Supposing God to possess the 
attribute of benevolence, will not that attribute ob- 
lige him to acknowledge and to recompense the ser- 
vices of men ? Is he not under the same moral obli- 
gation to reward obedience, that men are under to 
obey ? Is there any justice in making men incapa- 
ble, and then punishing them for being so ? The 
answer to these questions gave a strong support to 
the doctrine of free-will, human ability, and the effi- 
cacy and necessity of good works. 

Bat the advocates of these doctrines rested their 
cause not upon metaphysical arguments only, or 
appeals to the moral sentiment. They cited author- 
ity as well as their opponents. They found support 
to their opinions in ancient and current ideas of 
the Deity, ideas which, equally with those of their 
opponents, were embodied in acknowledged Scrip- 
tures ; ideas which assumed the existence of the sen- 
timent of benevolence both in God and man, and 
framed the whole system of religious worship upon 
that foundation ; a system of praises, songs, proces- 
sions, festivals, and offerings, having for their object 
to stimulate the divine benevolence through the sen- 
timent of self-comparison ; and of prayers, supplica- 
tions, fasts, penances, and self-tortures, intended to 
excite the divine pity. 

Upon this joint basis of argument and authority 
rests the Romish doctrine of indulgences, — the 
church, through its ministers, being supposed to be 
the trustee and authorized vender of the supererog- 
atory merits of Christ and the saints ; and upon 
this same basis rest the doctrines of absolution, 
11 



122 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



pardon upon repentance, universal grace, the saving 
efficacy of good works, the possibility and the cer- 
tainty of the salvation of all who desire it and strive 
for it, and ultimately, the doctrine of the salvation 
and eternal happiness of all. 

We ought to recollect, however, that the term, 
good works, has commonly been used by theologi- 
ans, not so much in a forensic, as in a mystic sense. 
They have chiefly intended by it, acts of worship, 
and acts beneficial to the priesthood ; while acts of 
duty to our fellow-men have been with difficulty 
admitted as entitled to that character, and placed, as 
it were contemptuously, at the very bottom of the 
scale.* 

23. There has always, however, existed an opin- 
ion, more or less diffused among all nations which 
have made any considerable advance in civiliza- 
tion, an opinion maintained by many pure mystics, 
which has given rise to a third theological school, 
the opinion, namely, that the only effectual way 
to please God is, doing good to man. This opin- 
ion, like those of the other two theological schools 
already described, rests partly upon metaphysical 
considerations, and partly upon authority ; for there 



* " Merit is of three kinds, % Thala, or the observance of all 
moral duties. 2. Dana, or giving of alms, including feeding priests, 
building pagodas, and works of public beneficence. 3. Bawana, or 
repeating prayers and reading religious books. The last infinitely the 
most meritorious." Summary and analysis of the Bhoodist doctrines 
in Malcolm's " Travels in South Eastern Asia," Vol. I. Part 2, ch. 6. 
We may trace here, as upon so many other points, a most remark- 
able, and as yet unexplored analogy between Bhoodist and Christian 
ideas. 



MORAL OBLIGATION, DUTY, MERIT. 123 

are a few passages in the Jewish scriptures, and a 
great number in the New Testament, which seem 
directly to teach it. Notwithstanding this authority 
in its favor, it isdecidedly heterodox ; and has been 
condemned over and over again, by the highest 
ecclesiastical authorities, as atheistical and damnable, 
leading inevitably to the conclusion that churches, 
priests, worship, scripture, and revelation are unne- 
cessary ; * and that mere human virtue is sufficient for 
salvation. Still it has contrived to insinuate itself, 
to a greater or less extent, into many creeds and 
many treatises nominally orthodox ; and notwith- 
standing all the opposing efforts of all the other 
mystic and semi-mystic sects, it is at the present 
moment rapidly diffusing itself. This is the theologi- 
cal creed of those who hold the disinterested theory 
of morals ; it results from moulding the idea of 
God, and of man's relation to God, into consistency 



* As respects the necessity of churches, priests, and worship, the 
opposite doctrine of salvation by grace and faith alone, logically car- 
ried out, leads precisely to the same results. It was in fact this doc- 
trine of Luther which gave the first impulse to the Reformation. 
That reformation consisted principally in an attack upon forms. And 
here we may perceive another cause of the sudden check given to 
Protestantism, and of the counter-revolution in so many countries in 
favor of Catholicism. Not only was this fundamental doctrine of 
Protestantism abhorrent to the common sense and common humanity 
of the laity, but the Reformed clergy presently found that their doc- 
trine in the hands of the Anabaptists would lead to the total abolition 
of the priesthood. They, therefore, themselves turned round, and 
undertook to refute, or at least to evade and set aside the very doc- 
trine, and to repress the very spirit, in which the Reformation had 
originated. Assailed by Catholics on one side and by Protestants on 
the other, no wonder that the Reformation came to a stop, and almost 
to an end. 



124 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



with that theory. The partisans of this theology, 
especially that division of them which has been led 
to adopt ascetic notions and practices, have common- 
ly been distinguished as Mystics, — a word which 
we use in a much larger sense. They are also called 
Theosophists, — a denomination, however, which 
also embraces those partisans of the first school of 
theology, who, like Spinoza and others, have refused 
to modify and contradict their metaphysical notions 
of the Deity, out of respect to scripture, tradition, and 
the common sense and current sentiment of man- 
kind. 

The creed of this third theological school may be 
thus briefly stated. 

Inasmuch as the Deity possesses in an infinite de- 
gree, all good qualities, joined to infinite power, he 
is, therefore, the natural and proper object of our 
highest admiration. Possessing the sentiment of be- 
nevolence in the highest degree, he becomes in con- 
sequence the necessary object of our highest moral 
approbation. As he is the author of all the blessings 
we enjoy, he is entitled to our highest gratitude. 
Nothing is said about the miseries we sulfer ; or, if 
mentioned, it is insisted that they are only blessings 
in disguise. # Thus admiration, approbation, and 
gratitude combine in the highest degree to render 
God the object of our highest love ; and, therefore, 



* See Pameirs beautiful poem, " The Hermit." This doctrine, how- 
ever, pushed to its logical consequences, will go the whole length of 
denying any distinction between good and evil, right and wrong. 
This paradox is common to all theosophistic creeds ; and is the un- 
avoidable result of the pure mystic hypothesis, under all its forms. 



MORAL OBLIGATION*, DUTY, MERIT. 125 

love to God ought to be the guiding motive of our 
conduct, and it would be, but for the selfishness of 
man, and his constant subjection to the temptations 
of the senses, whereby his attention is withdrawn 
from God, God's image is erased from his heart, and 
for all practical purposes he becomes an atheist. He 
does not hate God, that is impossible ; he forgets 
him. 

At this point the partisans of this theory separate 
and diverge. One division, following a path which 
we shall presently indicate,* runs into all the extrav- 
agances, first, of the most passive quietism, and after- 
wards of the most ultra asceticism, — doctrines which 
they support by several strong texts of scripture. 
The other, and of late the prevailing party, proceeds 
to argue, that since men act as they do, in conse- 
quence of the nature which God has given them, it 
is absurd to suppose that his malevolence can be 
excited by their acts. Extolling the attribute of 
benevolence, they are gradually led on to deny, that 
malevolence, or the disposition to inflict pain,— 
what other theologians denominate justice, — can be 
an attribute of the divine nature, — a denial, which, 
taking it for granted that God is the author of the 
universe, puts them to their wit's end to account for 
the origin of evil, that is, of pain and suffering, and 
drives them at last into the paradox, that there is 
no such thing as evil, that every thing is good.f 

* Vide Part II. ch. 6, § 4. 

t It is the perception that what a good God created must have been 
created good, that has led theologians to represent the original state 
of man as one of purity and innocence. The history of the fall is an 

n* 



126 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



For as benevolence is the highest and noblest attri- 
bute of which we can conceive ; as malevolence and 
self-comparison are apparently its opposites, leading, 
the one directly, the other indirectly, to the inflic- 
tion of pains, and, according to the moral theory of 
pure benevolence, the greatest obstacles to moral 
goodness ; as the infinite power ascribed to God does 
not allow us to suppose him to labor under the em- 
barrassment to which men are constantly subjected 
of not being able to do good to some without, at the 
same time, inflicting evil upon others ; therefore, it 
is concluded that the only motive by which, without 
dishonoring him, we can suppose God to be actu- 
ated, is, pure benevolence. God is love. He created 
men, not for his own pleasure, but for theirs ; all 
his other attributes disappear; and he* is gradually 
etherealzed into a personification of Benevolence. 

The entire predominancy of the sentiment of Be- 
nevolence in the divine character being admitted, it 
logically follows, that the pleasure of God can only 
be promoted by promoting the happiness of man. In 
order to please him we must confer pleasure upon 
sensitive beings other than himself; we must be like 
him, purely benevolent. A mere service rendered to 
him personally, burnt offering and worship, even 
love and obedience, if merely passive, are nothing. 
What he demands is, acts of love towards our fel- 
low-men. Thus forensic and mystic ideas of moral 



allegorical or mythic solution of the question of the origin of evil ; 
a solution, however, which we can hardly accept, unless we exclude 
the idea of benevolence from the Deity, or, with the Manichees, 
deny his omnipotence, and share it with the devil. 



MORAL OBLIGATION, DUTY, MERIT. 127 

goodness approach towards a coincidence ; and man's 
duty to God becomes identical with his duty to man. 
24. Since these views began to obtain a firm foot- 
hold in the modern Christian world, practical morals, 
even among the mystics, have made a rapid progress. 
Man, who, in other mystical systems, is represented 
as nothing, and his pains and pleasures as of no con- 
sequence, in this system becomes every thing. The 
love of God and the love of man begin to be looked 
upon as the same love ; and God is openly declared 
to be, what, in all systems of theology he covertly 
is, Man, individualized, glorified, deified. Worship, 
according to this theory, consists in the contempla- 
tion and admiration of infinite benevolence ; and is of 
use only so far as it may tend to excite to the per- 
formance of benevolent actions.* 



* Thus we may understand how Dr. Strauss, who, by regular de- 
scent through Pelagianism, Arminianism, Socinianism, and Rational- 
ism, now heads the advanced guard of the supporters of the theological 
theory above stated, after having proved to his own satisfaction, in 
his celebrated " Life of Jesus," that those parts of the Christian Scrip- 
tures called the " Gospels," so far as they purport to contain a narra- 
tive of events, are not authentic, but a mere collection of myths, in 
other words, of traditional legends, maintains, nevertheless, that those 
same gospels, even in their historical narrations, teach important 
truths very essential to mankind. The life of Jesus, in his view of 
it, is an individualized personification of deified Humanity, morally 
true, though historically false. Nor is it easy to see how those per- 
sons who coincide with Dr. Strauss as to the metaphysics of theology, 
and who still hold on to the Christian Scriptures as a guide of faith 
and conduct, can avoid accepting his system of critical interpretation, 
by which alone the Scriptures can be reconciled to their theology, or 
to the philosophical doctrine of the immutability of the laws of nature. 

Tracing the theological theory of pure benevolence through the 
Pelagian, Arminian, Socinian, and Rational line, forensic philosophy 
appears to be its fostermother ; but it has another genealogy, in which 






128 THEORY OF MORALS. 

Religion, which formerly aspired to control every 
thing ; which was made a pretence for trampling 
every moral obligation under foot ; which taught so 
often that men were bound, by their duty to God, to 
disregard all their obligations to each other ; and 
which scarcely served except to multiply evils and 



it appears as the nurseling of pure mysticism. This theory, so far as 
we know, was first advanced in the writings of the ancient Gnostics, 
who seem to have regarded God as a joint personification of truth and 
goodness ; and who ascribed all evil, sometimes to matter, and some- 
times to the devil. This idea as to God pervades the writings of 
several fathers of the church, particularly St. Bernard, the last of the 
Latin fathers. It was reproduced in the seventeenth century, in that 
celebrated work, the Augustinus of Jansenius, which formed the text 
book of the sect of the Jansenists. At first, the Jansenists were not 
only pure mystics, but very ascetic and very superstitious mystics. 
They could not fully grasp the necessary consequences of their own 
theory. Not only did they adhere tenaciously to all the forms and 
traditions of the Catholic church, but they even claimed that miracles 
were wrought in their own convent of Port Royal. Presently, how- 
ever, their ideas enlarged ; and before long, they were found fighting 
side by side with the philosophers, against the infallibility of the Pope, 
and the pretensions of the Jesuits, who, in those days, were the repre- 
sentatives and advocates, as our clergy are now, of current religious 
opinions; and who made, as our clergy make, both religion and 
morals subservient to that favorite scheme of all priesthoods,* the 
scheme of putting forward themselves as the great pillar of the public 
welfare, and entitled, in consequence, to have the management of 
every thing. Every idea subsequently developed by Channing, or by 
the sentimental rationalists of Germany, such as Schleiermacher and 
De Witte, may be found clearly stated in the work of Jansenius. 

The human mind everywhere proceeds according to the same 
laws. The history of New England Theology is, in little, a copy of 
the history of European Theology. The Hopkinsians (so called) 
represent the Jansenists ; and the theologians of that school are fast 
approaching towards a coincidence with that branch of the Socinians, 
of whom Channing was the leader. This is the secret of that recent 
alarming outbreak, even in the very bosom of the orthodox sects, of 
what is called just now in New England, Transcendentalism. 






MORAL OBLIGATION, DUTY, MERIT. 129 

crimes, has of late, in consequence of the growing 
tendency towards these views, become more mild 
and humane, and has been compelled to walk in the 
train of morality. This, however, is a subserviency, 
to which the haughtier of the mystics, who still 
flatter themselves with the idea of being the peculiar 
favorites, the chosen servants, the appointed inter- 
preters, and earthly vice-gerents of a deified image of 
themselves, do not submit without great reluctance, 
and many struggles, to throw off the yoke, and 
quitting the humble character of mere teachers of 
morality, to which, of late, they have been gradually 
restricted, to reestablish themselves, as of old, with 
the keys of heaven and hell in one hand, and an 
earthly sceptre in the other. 

25. As the opinions above sketched, respecting the 
Deity, originated in the application to theology of 
three different theories of morals variously modified, 
it has happened of course, that all the various sects 
of the three great theological schools above described, 
have held views of human nature correspondent to 
their theological opinions. Those who have applied 
to theology the selfish theory of morals, have preach- 
ed with consistent zeal the total depravity of man ; 
while those who have employed, in theology, the 
theory of pure benevolence, have run into the oppo- 
site extreme of representing men as by nature per- 
fectly amiable and good, and all the evils of society 
as originating from something exterior, and therefore 
to be wholly removed by the removal of those ex- 
terior impediments. This is the doctrine of human 
perfectibility, preached by the French philosophers, 






130 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



or some of them, in the last century, revived in this, 
by the late Dr. Channing, Owen, Fourier, and others, 
and which gains daily a greater circulation ; an 
opinion not only more comfortable, but what is of 
far greater importance, much nearer the truth, than 
that doctrine of total depravity, which it is so rapidly 
superseding. 

The various sects of the great intermediate school 
of theology, accordingly as in their theological 
opinions they have approached nearer to the selfish 
or to the disinterested school, will be found, in their 
opinions of the character of man, to approximate 
towards the extreme of total depravity on the one 
hand, and of perfectibility on the other. 



CHAPTER VI. 

GROUNDS OF MORAL JUDGMENT AS RESPECTS INDIVIDUAL 
ACTIONS AND ACTORS. 



1. Having shown upon what principles, looking at 
the external event, actions in general are pronounced 
right and wrong ; and upon what principles, looking 
at the motives by which they are ordinarily pro- 
duced, actions in general are pronounced virtuous or 
vicious ; it now only remains to inquire, What are the 
principles according to which we determine the 
moral character of individual acts and individual 
actors ? 

Suppose a beneficial action performed before our 



INDIVIDUAL MORAL JUDGMENTS. 131 

eyes ; that action is likely to have sprung from the 
sentiment of benevolence, modified more or less by 
other sentiments ; and therefore it may be a virtuous 
action ; and our first impulse will be to esteem it 
such. Yet, to pronounce it virtuous, we must sup- 
pose that the benefit was intended ; that it was not 
conferred merely out of fear lest the actor might oth- 
erwise suffer some pain from the person benefited ; or 
lose his good will ; or lose the good will of his neigh- 
bours, by failing to fulfil their expectations ; and that 
it was not performed out of the hope of reward, 
either from the person benefited, from his friends, or 
from society at large, by reason of a character for 
virtue thereby attained. 

Here is ample room for controversy and difference 
of opinion ; and we little need wonder at the dis- 
putes that prevail, as to the moral character of par- 
ticular acts. In the first place, it may be disputed, 
whether or not the act is beneficial ; and indeed a 
difference upon that point is apt to lie at the bottom 
of all moral controversies. Hence the importance of 
the science of Utility as a means of determining 
whether acts are, in fact, beneficial or not. If, as 
happens with respect to a great number of actions, 
there results a pleasure to some, and at the same 
time a pain to others; and if my sympathies are 
chiefly with those who suffer the pain, and yours 
with those who enjoy the pleasure, we shall dispute 
for ever about the character of the act ; and according- 
ly as we pronounce it right or wrong, will be apt to 
be our judgment respecting the motives of the actor. 
For most men are natural adepts in the egoistical 



132 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



philosophy, and find it difficult, if not impossible, to 
conceive that others view things in a different light 
from themselves ; and upon all moral questions they 
have been confirmed in this narrow notion by the 
prevalent idea of the intuitive certainty of moral 
opinions. 

2. Again, suppose the act, the moral character of 
which we are called upon to decide, to be apparently 
injurious, — painful, that is, to persons who enjoy our 
sympathy. We shall conclude at the first aspect, 
that he who performed it could not have been im- 
pelled by virtuous motives. Yet, in this conclusion, 
we may be greatly mistaken. The action, though 
clearly wrong in our judgment, might have appeared 
right to him ; and he may have performed it from 
the best of motives. He has done wrong ; that is 
to say, he has done an act which, looking merely to 
the external event, gives us moral pain ; but he in- 
tended to do right ; and looking merely at his mo- 
tives, we experience a moral pleasure. We condemn 
the act, but approve the man. 

3. We call those individuals virtuous, whose con- 
duct, on the wh'ole, corresponds with our ideas of 
moral obligation; we call those individuals vicious, 
whose habitual conduct runs counter to what we 
esteem the dictates of moral obligation. 

As individuals, generally speaking, are brought 
into immediate and frequent contact, only with a 
very small number of persons, their connexions, 
friends, and neighbours ; and as but little knowledge 
of individuals can be obtained, except by personal 
intercourse, most persons have no means whatever of 



INDIVIDUAL MORAL JUDGMENTS. 133 

knowing the peculiar views, peculiar temperament, 
degree of knowledge and reflection, and particular 
position of those out of the little circle of their ac- 
quaintance. In this destitution of all the necessary 
data for forming a correct opinion of each other's 
moral character, we are apt to proceed upon very 
narrow grounds ; to regard more words which we 
hear, than actions which we do not see ; and to 
condemn or approve each other according to con- 
formity, or want of conformity, whether in conduct 
or opinion, to some peculiar, often unfounded, notions 
of our own. Thus, a Scotchman hearing that the 
people of Paris and New Orleans dance, sing, and go to 
the theatre on Sundays, and that the people of New 
England observe that day with punctilious solem- 
nity, concludes at once, without the slightest hes- 
itation, that the French are a very immoral, the New 
Englanders a very moral, people. So a Mahometan, 
who is told for the first time, that all Christians eat 
pork, sets them all down at once, as destitute of 
goodness. Yet often the very persons who make 
these sweeping judgments as to communities or in- 
dividuals of whom they know nothing or next to 
nothing, in deciding as to the moral character of 
their intimate acquaintances, will proceed with the 
greatest caution, discrimination, and candor, and will 
arrive, in consequence, at very just conclusions. 

4. With respect, indeed, to those persons who are 
special causes to us of pleasure, whether the pleas- 
ure of admiration or any other pleasure, and who, 
by reason of pleasures conferred upon us, are ob- 
jects of our love, we are always ready to make all 
12 






V4r 



134 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



excuses for them, and to see all their actions in a 
favorable light ; nor do we easily believe that they 
are destitute of, or deficient in, that most excellent 
of all qualities, virtue. Hence it is, that so many 
apologists have started up to represent Alexander, 
Cassar, Bonaparte, in spite of the enormous inju- 
ries which they inflicted upon mankind, as wor- 
thy to be classed among the most virtuous and be- 
neficent of men. Hence it happens, that men of 
genius, poets, artists, and philosophers, who are 
sometimes men of very little virtue, always find so 
many zealous defenders of their moral character. 
Hence, too, the indulgent moral judgments respect- 
ing each other, formed by relatives, friends, and 
associates. 

On the other hand, all those who are the causes 
to us of pain, even though that pain be inflicted 
involuntarily, or out of pure good will, become 
thereby objects of our malevolence, in the shape 
either of simple dislike or hatred, of envy, or con- 
tempt. These persons will be likely, in conse- 
quence, to have their motives very sharply criticized ; 
and it will be with great difficulty, that we shall be 
induced to admit that there is any thing virtuous or 
good in their motives, or their conduct. Of this we 
have striking illustrations in the rage of party con- 
tests ; in which we see great bodies of men, whose 
differences of opinion and of conduct are often 
scarcely perceptible, mutually denouncing each other 
as fools and knaves, destitute alike of sense and of 
virtue. 

5. Men, in general, and especially that sort of 



INDIVIDUAL MORAL JUDGMENTS. 135 

men called men of the world, men who have had an 
extensive experience of mankind, are much more 
apt to suppose that any given action, even though in 
their estimation beneficial, originated in selfish, or 
what are called bad, motives than in good or disin- 
terested motives ; and hence persons of this class 
have generally been supporters of the selfish theory 
of morals. This is partly owing to the fact, that ob- 
servation has proved the general predominance of 
selfish motives over human conduct. It is partly 
owing, however, to a pain of inferiority, which does 
not allow us easily to admit that others are more 
virtuous than ourselves ; and which often excites a 
certain degree of malevolence towards men of the 
most exalted virtue. People become tired of hearing 
Aristides called the Just. 

6. This, however, is the case with respect to our 
contemporaries only, and those whom we have been 
accustomed to regard as our equals. With respect 
to the dead, who are no longer our rivals, or to whom 
we have been taught to look up with admiration 
from our infancy, as a sort of demi-gods ; or with 
respect to kings, princes, or superiors, whom, in like 
manner, we have always regarded as far above all 
rivalry of ours, we may even derive a certain pleas- 
ure of superiority from extolling them, because their 
excellence and exaltation reflects an honor upon hu- 
man nature, in which as men, and more particularly 
as subjects, or fellow-countrymen, we may esteem 
ourselves to have a share. 

7. This double operation of the sentiment of Self- 
comparison, leading us now to depreciate, and now 






■ 



136 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



to extol, it may be, the same persons, produces what 
have been pointed out as some of the strangest in- 
consistencies of human nature. We call them incon- 
sistencies, but they depend upon fixed and certain 
laws ; and they can no more to excite surprise in 
a mind versed in the science of man, than do the 
phenomena of eclipses, or the aberrations of the plan- 
ets, in the mind of the astronomer. The laws upon 
which the phenomena of human action depend, had 
they been only as patiently and accurately investi- 
gated, would appear quite as certain, and quite as 
regular, as those which govern the motion of the 
planets. 



PART SECOND. 



SOLUTION OF MORAL PROBLEMS AND CON- 
CILIATION OF ETHICAL CODES. 



CHAPTER I. 

OF PERSONAL SECURITY AND THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES 
RELATIVE TO IT. 

1. Having, in the preceding part of this treatise, 
by an analytical examination of the phenomena of 
human thought and action,* investigated the origin 
and nature of Moral Distinctions, and the laws ac- 
cording to which actions are classed as praiseworthy, 
indifferent, and wrong, meritorious, obligatory, per- 
missible, and criminal ; and having, also, pointed out 
the origin and foundation of the several prevailing 
theories of morals, and of the systems of practical 
morality founded upon those theories ; Ave now pro- 
pose to show the application of these results, as 
means of explaining both the coincidences and dis- 
crepances, so remarkable in the various systems of 
practical morality prevalent in different ages and 
countries. 

* This examination is not complete, but limited to the objects of 
the present treatise. In the Theory of Knowledge it will be pursued 
to a greater extent. 

12* 






138 



THEORY OF MORALS. 






Let us begin with those moral precepts, those 
Rights and Duties, which have an immediate refer- 
ence to life and personal security. 

2. In all systems of morals, deliberate and unpro- 
voked homicide has been esteemed a high crime ; 
and that for the obvious reason, that Death has ever 
been regarded as one of the greatest of evils, if not 
the very greatest, which a man can suffer, or inflict. 

3. If we inquire why death is regarded as so great 
an evil, we shall find that several circumstances con- 
cur to give it that character. In the first place, 
except where it is instantaneous, it is the result of, 
or at least is or appears to be attended by. intense 
pains consequent upon the disorganization or dis- 
turbed action of the vital system. Thus the idea of 
excessive suffering becomes intimately, and almost 
inseparably, associated with the idea of death. 

In the second place, the idea of death is attended 
by a pain of inferiority of the acutest kind. Death 
levels all distinctions. It takes away all that makes 
us superior to mere clods of earth ; it reduces the 
most beautiful and the most illustrious to heaps of 
disgusting corruption, and puts the wisest, the witti- 
est, and the strongest, below the level of the meanest 
worm that crawls. A live dog is better than a dead 
lion. It is this pain of inferiority which makes men 
clutch so eagerly at the idea of a new life after death, 
however slight and unsatisfactory may be the evi- 
dence by which that idea is supported.* 



- " that must be our cure 



To be no more ? sad cure ; for who would lose, 
Though full of pain, this intellectual being, 



RIGHTS OF PERSONAL SECURITY. 139 

In the third place, the idea of death is attended 
by a pain of inferiority of another kind, a pain of igno- 
rance or doubt, joined to which are pains of fear. Is 
death the end or not ? If not, what is to follow 
after death ? * This doubt and the fears which 
attend it greatly enhance that compound pain, called 
dread or Horror, with which Death is so commonly 
regarded. 

Finally, in all ages and countries, in which the 
idea of a future existence has prevailed, that is to 
say,> in almost all, if not all, ages and countries of 
which we have any knowledge, the conceived pos- 
sibility, and, in many cases, the conceived probability 
and even certainty, that such future existence will 
be an existence of torment, has greatly added to the 
dread of death. 

Mystical views have contributed not a little to 
enhance these horrors. Mysticism has taught, at 
least some modifications of it have taught, that death 
will introduce us, at once, into the sensible presence 
of an awful, if not an offended Deity ; and hence, 
in all countries in which mystical ideas have pre- 
vailed, the conceived necessity of preparations for 

These thoughts that wander through eternity, 
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost 
In the wide womb of uncreated night 
Devoid of sense and motion ? " 

Paradise Lost, Book II. v. 146. 

* " Ay, there 's the rub ; 

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
Must give U3 pause. There 's the respect, 
That makes calamity of so long life." 

Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1. 



■ 



140 THEORY OF MORALS. 



death ; which conceived necessity has caused sud- 
den, and what is called violent death, to be regarded 
as something peculiarly dreadful ; # though it is evi- 
dently the least painful, and, therefore, as far as that 
goes, the most desirable way of dying. 

4. Mystical systems of morals have condemned 
homicide equally with forensic systems ; but upon 
widely different grounds. According to mystical 
morality, murder is wrong, not because death is 
an evil to him who suffers it, but because it dis- 
pleases God to have his creatures killed, his prop- 
erty injured, and his arrangements interfered with ; 
or, as it is commonly expressed, to have men hurried 
into his presence before he has sent for them. 

5. This objection, it is plain, applies to all sorts of 
killing, — killing in battle, killing in execution of a 
judicial sentence, killing in self-defence, — just as 
decidedly as to the most unprovoked murder ; and 
hence those mystical moralists who have been con- 
sistent, have denounced war, capital punishments, 
and, since resistance must always tend towards homi- 
cide, even resistance to injuries, — as displeasing to 
God, and, therefore, sins. For it should be observed 
that what, in forensic systems of morals, are denomi- 
nated Faults and Crimes, in mystical systems of 
morals, are called Sins. Whatever thought, word, 



Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, 
Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled ; 
No reckoning made, but sent to my account 
With all my imperfections on my head. 
•O horrible ! O horrible ! most horrible ! " 

Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 5. 



RIGHTS OF PERSONAL SECURITY. 141 

or deed, is displeasing to God # is sinful. Whatever 
is not sinful, is pure, holy, just, and right, — terms 
which, in mystical phraseology, are equivalents. 

Even suicide, being liable to the same mystical 
objection above stated, has been denounced by many 
mystical moralists, under the name of self-murder, as 
one of the greatest of sins ; a denunciation in which 
all the mystical moralists of the Christian school have 
united ; though many of them, out of deference to 
forensic morality, have endeavoured to maintain, in 
the very teeth of their own principles, the lawfulness 
of war, of capital punishments, and of homicide in 
self-defence. 

6. Forensic morals, though condemning homicide 
as generally wrong, have yet admitted many cases 
in which it becomes permissible, and even praise- 
worthy. Homicide in self-defence has been esteem- 
ed permissible for the reason, that benevolence is 
naturally extinguished and' malevolence excited, to- 
wards the man who threatens us with the pain of 
death, or, indeed, with any other grievous pain. 

7. Indeed the pain excited by the apprehension of 
death, produces, in general, such a total extinguish- 
ment of the sentiment of benevolence, that to save 
one's life even by sacrificing the life of an innocent 
person, — as when two drowning men struggle to- 
gether for a plank, — does not indicate any extraor- 
dinary deficiency of moral sentiment, and is, there- 
fore, regarded in many cases as permissible. 

8. Even the sentiment of benevolence itself may 
prompt me to commit homicide, when that homicide 
is necessary to the protection of those I love, my 



142 THEORY OF MORALS. 

parents or children or near relatives or friends or 
fellow-citizens ; and hence homicide under these 
circumstances, may even assume a praiseworthy- 
character,, may be regarded as a beneficial and mer- 
itorious act. Homicide in war, and public execu- 
tions, stand precisely upon this ground. 

9. What are called the Laws of War, at least those 
among them which tend to diminish its horrors, 
grow, for the most part, out of the sentiment of be- 
nevolence. So long as the enemy maintains a threat- 
ening aspect and position, my duty towards my fam- 
ily and my country requires me to use my best 
efforts for his destruction. But when he is humbled, 
discomforted, subdued, and no longer dangerous, to 
put him to death would be a pure, gratuitous cruelty. 

Some other of these laws of war, such as that, for 
instance, which forbids the use of poisoned weapons, 
originated in the peculiar character which war as- 
sumed in modern Europe ; it having become an oc- 
cupation and, as it were, a sort of sport and pastime 
for the nobility ; so that the field of battle came to 
resemble, in some respects, the lists of chivalry. 
During the wars of the French Revolution, which 
were wars of feeling, not of amusement, many of 
these carpet regulations were disregarded or set 
aside. But though the atrocities of those wars were 
very much cried out against, they presented no in- 
stances of deliberate, unprovoked, cold-blooded cruel- 
ty, like the desolation of the Palatinate by the orders 
of Louis the Fourteenth. 

10. In order to understand the strange contradic- 
tions of opinion which exist throughout Christen- 



RIGHTS OF PERSONAL SECURITY. 143 

dom, on the subject of duelling, as well as upon sev- 
eral other points of morals, it is necessary to consider 
that although the mystical theory of morals — ac- 
cording to which killing in a duel is one of the most 
aggravated kinds of murder — is preached by all the 
priests, and is taught in all the schools, yet there 
has always existed among the upper classes of soci- 
ety a traditional code of forensic morality, called, by 
way of distinction, the Law of Honor. 

This modern code of forensic morals, this Law of 
Honor, consisted originally of a few maxims and 
practices common for the most part to all rude and 
warlike nations, which the conquerors of the Roman 
Empire brought with them from the woods of Ger- 
many. When literature began to dawn once more, 
the code of honor was gradually improved by max- 
ims derived from the schools of the ancient philoso- 
phers, Stoic and Epicurean ; and in still later times, 
it has been refined and purified by the labor of many 
enlightened men of the world, and of several pro- 
found philosophers. 

This Law of Honor, this current forensic system 
of morality, on several points, is directly at war with 
the Christian mystic code. Persons of the upper 
classes are taught the mystic code of morals at school 
and church, and the code of honor at home and in 
society ; and hence results, in many cases, a strange 
confusion and inconsistency of thought and action. 
Persons of the lower class, till within a short period, 
were only instructed in the mystical code, which 
inculcated obedience, humility, contentedness, and 
hard labor, as the special duties of that lower class. 



144 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



But as within the last century the distinction of 
ranks has been rapidly breaking up throughout Chris- 
tendom, and knowledge has been gradually equal- 
ized, the Law of Honor, or the modern forensic code 
of morals, has obtained a more general circulation ; 
and notwithstanding the vast efforts, within the last 
fifty years, of the supporters of mysticism, forensic 
notions of morality have constantly continued to 
gain a wider currency, and acceptance. 

11. According to the code of honor, there are cer- 
tain cases in which it is a duty to accept, and even 
to send, a challenge ; and if homicide ensue, it is 
held to be justifiable. Duelling, by those who de- 
fend it, is put upon the same ground with the inflic- 
tion of capital punishments. It is alleged that the 
duellest, like the magistrate, if he inflict an evil upon 
a single individual, confers, at the same time, a ben- 
efit upon society ; and a benefit which is the more 
meritorious, because he risks his life to confer it. 
Duelling, in fact, originated in the neglect of the 
laws to provide proper punishments for insults ; so 
that insulted parties were obliged to take the law 
into their own hands ; and the true and only effect- 
ual means of suppressing it, is, to supply that defi- 
ciency of the laws. # 

12. With respect to suicide, which may be defin- 
ed to be the voluntary aiding and abetting in one's 
own death, there are four several and distinct causes 



* Bentham is the only author who has treated the subject of duel- 
ling with any knowledge of human nature, or in a manner at all 
satisfactory. See " Bentham's Theory of Legislation," Vol. II. Part 
II. ch. 14. Of Honorary Satisfaction. 



RTGHTS OF PERSONAL SECURITY. 145 

from which it may spring; and accordingly as it is 
produced by one or the other of those causes, it is 
regarded, in forensic systems of morals, as indiffer- 
ent, as wrong, as meritorious, as a duty. 

First. Suicide is often caused by the disease call- 
ed melancholy. This is a disorder of the nervous 
system which destroys all capacity for pleasure, shut- 
ting the door even against Hope, — a pleasure that 
often suffices to supply the place of all others. Un- 
der the torture of this disease, even if it be not attend- 
ed, as often is the case, by a partial overturn of the 
intellect, moral obligation loses all its force ; and the 
unhappy sufferer is often driven to seek deliverance 
by suicide. No enlightened forensic moralist holds 
men to strict moral responsibility for acts performed 
under the influence of this disease, to which persons 
of excessive sensibility, and, therefore, possessing a 
peculiar delicacy of moral sentiment, are specially 
liable. # 

Second. Suicide may originate in terror, in de- 
spondency, in what is usually called weakness of 
mind, — a want of courage, fortitude, confidence, 
and resolution to meet and encounter the usual evils 
of life. In that case, it is regarded as wrong, be- 
cause he who commits it, is looked upon as shrink- 
ing, in a cowardly manner, from the discharge of 



* The tragedy of < ; Hamlet " is a most masterly exhibition of the 
power of melancholy to disorder the intellect, and to destroy the force 
of the warmest affections, even of love itself. Filial affection, strength- 
ened by habit, alone remains too powerful for it. Goethe was the 
first who made this criticism; its obvious justice has caused it to be 
universally assented to. 

13 



146 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



those duties which he owes to his friends, and to 
society. This, and the preceding case, are very- 
apt to be confounded together; and, indeed, they 
run into each other by insensible degrees. 

If, however, the evil from which refuge be sought 
by a voluntary death bears the character of disgrace 
and degradation, as in the cases of Lucretia and of 
Cato, it is considered lawful to escape it by suicide ; 
and the courage, contempt of life, and acute sensibil- 
ity to dishonor, of which suicide, under such cir- 
cumstances, is a proof, secure approbation, admira- 
tion, and applause. 

Thirdly. A man may sacrifice his life for the sake 
of rendering a benefit to others, induced thereto by 
the joint influence of benevolence, and of the desire 
of superiority. Such a sacrifice of life is placed in 
the highest rank of merit. Even the mystics admit 
this. 

Fourthly, A man is held bound to sacrifice his 
life, or at least to risk it, in defence of his family and 
his country ; because the ordinary force of moral sen- 
timent is sufficient to produce that line of conduct. 

Even the mystical moralists, with all their horror 
of suicide, agree that men are bound to sacrifice 
their lives in the cause of God ; though they are 
very little agreed among themselves, as to what the 
cause of God is. 

13. Mystical morality settles the question of tyran- 
nicide in two opposite ways. Apart from the general 
guilt of homicide, it is, say the mystics, the duty of 
men to submit quietly to the tyrant whom God has 
placed over them. But if that tyrant is also the en- 



RIGHTS OF PERSONAL SECURITY. 147 

emy of God, that alters the case ; and there are not 
wanting good mystical Christian authorities, both 
Protestant and Catholic,* for putting such tyrants to 
death. As the priesthood, however, have fallen more 
and more into subserviency to the civil power, the 
former view of this question has more and more pre- 
vailed. 

Forensic moralists may entertain doubts, whether 
the secondary evils of tyrannicide are not more than 
sufficient to counterbalance its immediate advan- 
tages ; and they may hesitate, therefore, whether to 
class it among wrong, permissible, or praiseworthy 
actions. But the moral character of particular actors 
depends upon their particular motives ; and few 
doubt as to the moral character, in other words, as 
to the disinterestedness and good intentions of Bru- 
tus, or Charlotte Corday. 

14. In all countries in which there is no regular 
administration of justice, it is deemed a duty to one's 
murdered relations to avenge their death by the 
death of the murderer. Where law is established, 
the relations of the murdered party are held bound to 
be content with legal punishment. 

In defect of law, there is no doubt a certain util- 
ity resulting to society from private revenge; but 
this utility is something too. distant, and requires for 
its discovery too great an effort of the reasoning fac- 
ulties, to have been very distinctly perceived in 
many communities, in which private revenge is es- 



* Namely, Bellarmine, Suarez, Mariana, Buchanan, &c. See Ran- 
ke's " History of the Popes," Book VI. § I. 



148 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



teemed a doty. That idea of duty has reference 
principally to the murdered party ; and rests mainly 
upon superstitious opinions. It is imagined that the 
murdered man cannot sleep quietly in his grave, till 
his murder be avenged. * The same pains of ma- 
levolence, of inferiority, and, indeed, of all other 
kinds, are ascribed to him dead, which he was capa- 
ble of experiencing while living ; and the sentiment 
of benevolence prompts to the relief of those pains, 
or at least some of them, by inflicting pains upon 
the object of his conceived malevolence. Malevo- 
lence against the man who has deprived us of a 
friend, impels in the same direction ; and under this 
double impulse, there arises, in all barbarous states 
of society, states of society, that is, in which laws 
have yet no established existence, a tendency towards 
revenge which laws when they come to be estab- 
lished, often find great difficulty in subduing. 

15. In societies somewhat more advanced but 
still barbarous, and in which the laws, or their ad- 
ministration is so imperfect as to inflict no punish- 
ment at all, or no adequate punishment, upon a great 
variety of private injuries, it is esteemed permissible, 
and even in some cases a duty, for the injured indi- 
vidual to inflict punishment, and in some cases, even 
capital punishment, upon the offender. This idea of 
duty plainly originates in the perception of the utility 
of punishments to society at large. It i ^esteemed 
both a man's right and his duty, to destroy a dan- 
gerous human creature who has assailed his person, 



This idea plays a great part in the tragedy of" Hamlet." 






RIGHTS OF PERSONAL SECURITY. 149 

or intruded into his household with criminal inten- 
tions, or inflicted some serious injury upon him, and 
who is likely to do similar injuries to others ; just as 
it would be both his right and his duty to destroy a 
wild beast, under like circumstances. 

16. In such a state of society to volunteer to re- 
venge the injuries of those, who are unable to be 
their own avengers, is esteemed a beneficial and 
meritorious act ; and hence, in the barbarous times 
of the Middle Ages, the origin of the idea of knights- 
errant, celebrated in the Romances, who were sup- 
posed to have gone about revenging the wrongs of 
the weak and innocent. # Traces of the same ideas 
are to be found in the Greek legends of Hercules 
and Theseus. 

It was this very view of matters, which secured for 
the Regulators, who figured in the early colonial 
history of some of the American States, and which 
secures to the executors of Lynch Law, in the pres- 
ent day, a certain degree of public approbation. 
They are regarded as supplementary to the laws, as 
the avengers of crimes which the laws cannot, or do 
not, reach. 

17. The practice of duelling sprang, as we have 
seen, out of this practice of private revenge, justified 
and made necessary by the defects of the laws. It 
owed its absurdity of giving the aggressor a chance 



* The institution of knighthood, and the vows which the knights 
took — exhibiting a strange intermixture of feudal and mystical 
notions — created some foundation in fact, for the fictions of the Ro- 
mances. 

13* 



150 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



to add homicide to his previous injury, — in which 
respect alone it differs from the practice of assassina- 
tion, and in consequence of which absurdity alone 
it has been able to maintain itself so long among 
civilized and polite nations, — to a notion derived 
from the mystical doctrine, that Godj who directs all 
things, will certainly give the victory to that party 
who deserves it. This idea had, at one time, such 
a prevalence throughout Europe, that trials by com- 
bat and by ordeal became established expedients of 
the tribunals of justice. Several of the existing rules 
of duelling were originally rules of court. 

Thus it appears that the mystics contributed large- 
ly to the introduction of duelling ; a practice, which, 
in later times, they have exerted themselves in vain 
to put an end to. The gradual abandonment of the 
practice of duelling has been produced, not by the 
arguing or preaching of the mystics, but by the ad- 
vancing humanity of the age, and the enlightened 
reasoning of forensic moralists. 

18. In all those countries in which a tolerably 
complete triumph of law has been established, retali- 
atory homicide is no longer permitted. That which 
was useful until a better substitute had been provid- 
ed, after the provision of that substitute, becomes 
pernicious. Still, all codes of forensic morals con- 
sidering the effect of injuries received to diminish 
the ordinary force of the sentiment of benevolence, 
and even to give a preponderancy to the sentiment of 
malevolence, look upon provocation as diminishing, 
in a proportional extent, the moral guilt of homicide, 



RIGHTS OF PERSONx\L SECURITY. 151 

and even in some cases of extreme provocation, as 
purging it altogether.* 

19. In several systems of forensic morals, the de- 
struction of new-born infants by their parents, and 
especially the destruction of infants iii the womb of 
the mother, is esteemed permissible ; at least under 
certain circumstances. Mystical morality, proceed- 
ing upon the one inflexible idea above stated, con- 
demns these acts as among the most criminal. Fo- 
rensic morals have permitted them on the ground, 
that death to a new-born, and especially to an un- 
born infant, is in fact rather a pain to the parents 
than to the child ; that such acts are never likely to 
be resorted to, except when essential to relieve pa- 
rents from a burden which they have no means to 
support ; and when the life of the child, if preserved, 
is almost certain to be a life of degradation and 
misery. 

Much has been said about the cruelty of these 
acts ; and the utter helplessness of infancy is well 
calculated to create a feeling of pity in its behalf. 
But is mere life such a boon ? What shall be said of 
that benevolence which saves the life of the child 
only to make its existence a perpetual disgrace to its 
mother and itself? which punishes child-murder 



* The English common law admits several distinctions upon this 
subject, — such, for instance, as whether the fatal blow was struck, 
or not, with a deadly weapon, — which, though sufficiently well 
founded when they were originally adopted, at which time arms were 
universally worn, have no adaptation to the existing state of things. 
The consequence is, that the letter of the English law is constantly 
set aside, by a humane perjury on the part of jurors. 



152 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



with one hand, and shuts up foundling asylums 
with the other? 

Even with respect to children born in lawful wed- 
lock, the Romans and the Chinese might be entitled 
to ask, whether to extinguish the life of an infant 
daughter before she is hardly conscious of existence, 
is, on the whole, any greater cruelty or crime, than 
to shut her up, full grown and full of desire, to pine 
away her life in a convent ; or to gratify a selfish 
pride by educating her in a style which incapacitates 
her from earning her own livelihood, a style which 
you can leave her no adequate means to support, and 
which exposes, or may expose her, to a thousand 
miseries ? 

But that the act of infanticide is a violation of the 
primary impulses of benevolence, is sufficiently evi- 
dent^ even from the practices of those nations among 
which it has obtained. The custom is to expose 
the children ; not to put them to death, but to leave 
them to perish. This practice, no doubt, is the 
more cruel of the two ; and yet it originates in im- 
pulses of benevolence. The child that is exposed 
may possibly be r.escued by somebody more able or 
more willing to support it than its natural protectors ; 
and many Greek and Roman legends are founded 
upon incidents of that sort. Even if the child per- 
ishes, at least the unhappy parent escapes the misery 
of seeing its last agonies. 

If the Roman father once lifted the new-born babe 
from the ground, and so acknowledged it to be his 
child, he could not afterwards expose it. Parental 
affection, if it be allowed but a moment to develope 



RIGHTS OF PERSONAL SECURITY. 153 

itself, becomes so strong as to prove an overmatch 
for most other impulses ; and for a father to hold his 
infant child in his arms, and not to feel the strong 
force of parental tenderness, would prove him, under 
ordinary circumstances, greatly deficient in benevo- 
lence. For obvious reasons, parental tenderness in a 
mother, is a still stronger sentiment than in a father ; 
and nothing but the pressure of extreme want, or 
the horror of disgrace, will, under ordinary circum- 
stances, induce a mother to consent to, or to take 
part in, the death of her infant child.* 

20. Even with regard to those homicides which 
all systems of morals allow to be criminal, a great 
difference exists in different systems, as to the degree 
of criminality ascribed to them. In cultivated and 
refined societies, in which the supremacy of the law 
has long been established, and where children are 
trained from their infancy to keep their passions un- 
der control, a very different view is taken of this 
matter from that which prevails in savage and bar- 
barous societies. As, in these latter societies, the 
average force of benevolence is less, and the average 
force of malevolence greater, the force of moral obli- 
gation is, in fact, different. 

21. It is, also, to be considered, that, in the case 
of a man killed, the injury is by no means confined 
to the party murdered, — a circumstance which tends 
greatly to add to the criminality of the act. It ex- 



* The punishment proper to be inflicted upon infanticide is discuss- 
ed with much good sense and humanity by Bentham. Theory of 
Legislation, Vol. II. Part 1, ch. 12. 



154 THEORY OF MORALS. 

tends to his friends, all those dependent upon him, or 
who loved him ; and even to society at large. Hence 
the murder of a king, a chieftain, a philosopher, a 
poet, even the head of a family, is looked upon as a 
more aggravated offence, than the murder of an un- 
distinguished, isolated individual. Hence in monar- 
chical countries the excessive guilt ascribed to regi- 
cide. 

22. It is from a more distinct apprehension of the 
secondary evils resulting from homicide ; it is from 
the greater mutual interconnexion of men, and the 
increase of humanity which civilization produces, 
and especially from the greater rarity of the act, that 
murder, in a civilized state, is looked upon as so 
much greater a crime than in barbarous communities. 
Just in proportion as homicide becomes more rare, it 
implies a greater destitution of moral sentiment ; till 
at last, from being regarded as comparatively a trivial 
misdeed, it comes to be reckoned among the greatest 
of crimes. Thus the homicides perpetrated during the 
reign of republicanism in France, though far less 
numerous and atrocious than those which on various 
occasions had signalized the monarchy ; though ac- 
companied by far fewer acts of gratuitous cruelty ; 
and though prompted by an impulse into which the 
sentiment of benevolence entered in a much greater 
degree ; yet taking place as they did, after Europe 
had, for near a century, been unaccustomed to such 
acts, they were thought to indicate a new and strange 
development of human depravity ; and they cast a 
stigma upon the cause of reform, whether political 
or philosophical, which, even to the present day, 
serves to impede its progress. 



RIGHTS OF PERSONAL SECURITY. 155 

23. We have already pointed out some of the para- 
doxes on the subject of homicide, to which the mys- 
tical theory of morals has given rise. But there are 
other conclusions of that theory on this same subject 
which are worse than paradoxical ; conclusions which 
have impelled men, under a mistaken sense of moral 
obligation, to perpetrate the most enormous cruelties, 
and to inflict upon their fellow-men the greatest pos- 
sible injuries, not only death, but injuries far worse 
than death. 

The personal God of the more orthodox mystics, 
as we have already seen, is supposed susceptible to 
feelings not of benevolence only, but also of malev- 
olence, commonly disguised under the epithet of 
justice ; and it has thence been concluded that the 
torment, and even the total destruction of those 
whom God hates, must be agreeable to God ; and of 
course a moral duty. Each different school of mys- 
tics, setting themselves up to be God's chosen inter- 
preters and vicegerants upon earth, have naturally 
concluded, that all who refuse to acknowledge and 
receive them in that character, must of course be 
God's enemies, and that God must delight in their 
destruction ; and whenever they have possessed the 
power, they have conceived it to be their duty to 
God to suppress and destroy these his enemies. 
Hence we find the history of every school of mys- 
tics, whether Jews, Egyptians, Persian followers of 
Zoroaster, Christians in all their varieties, Pagans, 
Mahometans, Bhramins or Boodhists, little more than 
one continued series of outrages and injuries, carried 
to the extremity of the most cruel death against all 






1 56 THEORY OF MORALS. 

those, whether denominated heretics, misbelievers, 
infidels, or atheists, who have refused to acknow- 
ledge the reality of their divine mission and appoint- 
ment, and humbly to submit, in consequence, to their 
despotic authority. If within the last century, reli- 
gious persecution throughout Christendom has assum- 
ed a less destructive character, that has been chiefly 
owing to the circumstance that with the declining 
influence of the mystical philosophy and the increase 
of religious skepticism, civil governments have re- 
fused to act any longer as the agents of priestly per- 
secution. All that can be done without the help of 
the civil magistrate, still is done. The unhappy 
rebel against mystic despotism, is placed under a 
social interdict, not wholly dissimilar to that inter- 
dict of fire and water among the Romans, which, 
evading the name and the form of capital punish- 
ment, was more terrible and not less effectual. 

That school of Christian mystics, which we have 
above described as having combined the mystical 
and disinterested theories of morals, and gradually 
etherealized God into a personification of Humanity, 
are led by that view to repudiate religious persecu- 
tion ; and hence, among that school of mystics there 
are some sincere friends of the entire toleration of 
opinions ; and it is partly owing to the increased 
diffusion of their ideas, that religious persecutions 
have gradually acquired a more mitigated character. 

24. Wounds, blows, and assaults upon the person, 
especially where the injury is permanent, or endan- 
gers life ; and for the same reason, the administration 
of poisons, that is, of certain drugs tending to de- 



RIGHTS OF PERSONAL SECURITY. 157 

range the vital functions, and to inflict pains of dis- 
ease, — such drugs, for instance, as alcohol and opi- 
um, — are acts, the direct and inevitable tendency 
of which is, to inflict pain. They are, therefore, 
usually classed as wrong acts, though there are cer- 
tain circumstances similar to those already pointed 
out in the case of homicide, which may render them, 
in certain cases, permissible, obligatory, and even 
meritorious. 

25. The same may be said of Restraint or Impris- 
onment, the infliction of which combines pains of 
muscular and mental activity, pains of inferiority, and 
the deprivation of many pleasures, which might oth- 
erwise have been pursued and enjoyed. 

26. Compulsion stands upon the same ground. It 
is the impelling a man by the pain of fear to submit 
to some other pain, such, for instance, as the pains of 
labor, falling under the head of pains of activity. 
Compulsion is always attended by a pain of inferior- 
ity, which makes it doubly disagreeable. It is, how- 
ever, esteemed sometimes wrong, sometimes permis- 
sible, sometimes obligatory, and sometimes meritori- 
ous, according to the objects for which, and the 
circumstances under which, it is exercised. The 
state of Slavery includes all the evils of restraint 
and compulsion ; and it is upon that ground that 
most recent moralists have maintained that to hold 
men in slavery is morally wrong. The prevalence 
of slavery, however, still causes it to be regarded 
by many as morally permissible. 

27. Threats are the preliminary to compulsion,, 

14 



H 



158 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



and are one chief means of compulsion. Of course, 
they are to be regarded in the same light. 

28. We come next to a class of personal injuries 
called Insults. These injuries, considering merely 
the bodily pain which they inflict, are often of the 
most trifling character ; indeed, some of them inflict 
no bodily pain at all. They consist in such acts as 
merely touching a man with a stick, or shaking it 
over him, ejecting a drop of spittle into his face, or 
the applying to him a particular epithet, such as liar, 
or coward. These acts owe their injurious character 
entirely to the fact that they are conventionally used 
and understood as marks of contempt. The pain 
they inflict is a pain of inferiority ; and to submit 
quietly to them is understood to imply a voluntary 
acquiescence in our own degradation. Now, inas- 
much as the pain of inferiority is an essential auxil- 
iary even to ordinary virtue, to show ourselves in- 
sensible to that pain, is regarded as indicating a 
depraved character. 

Legislators, who generally look merely at the out- 
side of things, have failed to comprehend the true 
character and serious nature of insults. They have 
regarded them as trifles unworthy the notice of the 
laws ; and though, when seen in the light of provo- 
cations, their importance has been admitted, yet no 
enactments have been made to suppress and punish 
them. Hence it has happened that duelling, which 
offers a remedy, though often a very imperfect and 
a very expensive one against this sort of injuries, has 
survived all the homilies that have been uttered, 
and even all the laws that have been enacted, against 
it. 



RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. 159 



CHAPTER II. 

RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. DUTIES AND CRIMES CORRELA- 
TIVE TO THOSE RIGHTS. 

1. Let us now pass to the consideration of the 
rights of property; of the duties which are. correla- 
tive to those rights ; and of the acts which are con- 
sidered wrong, because they violate those rights. 

Property, as Bentham has ably and clearly shown, 
is nothing but a Basis of expectation.* The idea of 
property consists in the expectation of being able to 
draw certain advantages from the thing possessed ; 
an expectation, which in a limited number of cases, 
arises anterior to all law or convention, and affords a 
foundation for the earliest laws ; such, for example, 
as the expectation entertained by men even in the 
most savage state, of deriving advantage from the 
huts they have built, the weapons they have made, 
the fruits they have gathered, the game they have 
taken, and the hunting grounds which they and 
their fathers have possessed. But in far the greater 
number of cases, at least in a civilized community, 
that basis of expectation which constitutes property 
owes not only its firmness and its certainty, but 
its total existence, to usage and mutual understand- 
ing, in one word, to Law. 

2. To disappoint this expectation, to deprive a 
man of that which the law has authorized him to 



* Theory of Legislation, Vol. I. Principles of the Civil Code, Part 
ch. 8. 



160 THEORY OF MORALS. 

regard as his property, inflicts upon that man a pain of 
disappointment ; it cuts him off from all the pleasures 
which the possession of that property might have 
conferred ; and exposes him to suffer all those pains, 
against which the possession of that property might 
have enabled him to defend himself. An additional 
pain of inferiority is also attendant upon the idea of 
being plundered, whether by superior force or supe- 
rior art. It is this latter pain which renders the 
idea of being cheated or robbed, even of a small 
amount, so very disagreeable. 

3. All codes of morals, even those which exist 
among thieves, cheats, and robbers by profession, re- 
gard the violation of acknowledged rights of prop- 
erty as wrong and immoral. This, however, is only 
the case when those whose property is violated, are, 
to a greater or less degree, objects of our benevolence. 
If they are objects of our malevolence, the infliction 
of pain upon them does not give us any pain ; and 
we may even regard the violation of their rights of 
property, with a certain degree of moral approbation. 
Such is the case of a city taken by storm, and gen- 
erally, of the plunder of enemies ; such is the case 
of pulling down the houses and destroying the furni- 
ture of those who have become obnoxious to popular 
prejudice. The excessive obloquy attached to some 
particular violations of the right of property, such, 
for instance, as theft, is in a great measure artificial. 
Upon any just estimate, the moral turpitude of fraud 
is quite as great as that of theft. 

4. Mystical doctors have given the most unlimited 
license to violations of the rights of property. It was 



RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. 161 

enough to point out the Canaanites as the enemies 
of God. to make the Jews regard them and their 
country as lawful plunder. Both Christian and Mus- 
sulman doctors held, if they do not still hold, that the 
lands, goods, and chattels, and, indeed, the very per- 
sons of infidels and heretics, are the rightful spoil of 
orthodox believers : and robberies the most atrocious 
and extensive have been committed under this pre- 
text, both in the Old World and the New. That 
the saints shall inherit the earth, is a favorite doc- 
trine with fanatics of every creed ; and whenever 
they have possessed the slightest ability, they have 
always shown a corresponding disposition to carry 
that doctrine into practice. 

5. The effect of antipathy, or malevolence, in 
producing disregard for rights of property, will en- 
able us to understand how it happens, that in those 
countries in which property is very unequally dis- 
tributed, where there are a few rich, and a vast 
many poor, both the poor and the rich are apt to 
consider each other as fair plunder. Two such 
classes look upon each other with mutual antipathy, 
and have very little disposition to respect each oth- 
er's rights. Hence it happens that property is best 
respected and most secure in communities in which 
it is most equally distributed ; and that appears, also, 
to be the arrangement most favorable to the increase 
of wealth and the happiness of society* 



* If any one should incline to cite England as a country in which, 
though wealth be very unequally distributed, the rights of property 
are respected, I would beg him to call to mind the enormous criminal 

14* 



■ 



162 THEORY M OF MORALS. 

6. It is very unfortunate that the laws regulating 
the distribution of property, being founded, for the most 
part, upon the customs of barbarous times, and being 
almost always controlled by a few rich men misled 
by narrow views of self-interest, are almost every- 
where in a very imperfect state ; and do by no means 
correspond so exactly as they might and ought to 
do, with the natural basis of expectation. Hence it 
happens that law and equity are so often at vari- 
ance ; and that prejudices against the rights of prop- 
erty by no means destitute of plausibility, have 
spread far and wide through society. 

7. There is one kind of property of so anomalous 
a character, that although it has existed in most 
parts of the world, and still exists in many parts of 
it, it has at length been wholly repudiated by the 
more humane and civilized nations ; and that is, 
property in men, slaves. 

8. Slavery originated in war. # Instead of killing 
the prostrate enemy, he was seized and made a slave 
of. This hardly took place till men began to keep 
flocks, or to cultivate the earth ; because, prior to 
that state of things, slaves would have been a mere 
incumbrance. Hence it has happened, that at a cer- 
tain stage of advancing civilization, slavery has been 



calendar of that country, composed, in a great measure, of offences 
against property. The laws of property are enforced and upheld in 
the British Isles ; but it can hardly be said that the rights of property 
are respected. 

* See this subject fully treated in a work by the author of this 
treatise, entitled, " Despotism in America," ch. 2. See also, Theory 
of Politics. 



RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. 163 

introduced into almost all communities. From this 
circumstance some reasoners have concluded, that, 
at a certain stage of civilization, the introduction of 
slavery becomes an element necessary to the further 
advancement of society ; a conclusion which the 
premises do by no means warrant. 

It has, also, been pretended that when the pros- 
trate enemy, instead of being killed, is made a slave 
of, there is a triumph of benevolence over malevo- 
lence, at _ which humanity ought to rejoice, and 
which proves that slavery originates in benevolence, 
and tends to the increase of human happiness. The 
defenders of the African slave trade alleged that it 
annually saved thousands of wretches from being put 
to death ; as though slavery were not an evil, upon 
any just estimate, infinitely greater than death. Be- 
nevolence, in fact, had nothing whatever to do with 
the introduction of slavery. It was a feeling of malev- 
olence joined to a desire of superiority, and the ex- 
pectation of advantage from the services of the slaves, 
that made men slaves in the first place ; it is the 
continued operation of these same motives, that 
keeps them so. 

9. Slavery has always been acknowledged, and 
for good reasons, to be the most miserable condition 
into which a man can fall. It subjects him to con- 
stant pains of inferiority, and to a great many pains 
of other kinds. It is impossible for men of ordinary 
humanity to inflict so great an evil upon their fellow- 
men, unless they be, at the same time, objects of 
malevolence ; and it is only by keeping up against 
the slaves a feeling of malevolence, that is, making 



164 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



them objects of hatred, upon the ground that they 
are heathens, savages, destitute of the ordinary de- 
gree of humanity, and certain, if they are set free, to 
murder their masters ; an inferior order of beings, 
made to be slaves, incapable of civilization, not 
able to take care of themselves, and, therefore, or 
for some other reasons, proper objects of hatred and 
contempt; it is only while malevolence is kept up 
by some such artifices, that slavery can continue 
to exist. Hence the great anxiety evinced by slave- 
holders and their friends to foster such prejudices 
and to diffuse them ; and hence the destruction of 
these prejudices ought to be the chief object of those 
who aim at the abolition of slavery. 

10. It appears, then, that while the respect which 
is paid to property in general originates in the senti- 
ment of benevolence, slave property owes both its 
origin and its continuance to the sentiment of malev- 
olence, — a very essential distinction between these 
two kinds of property, —a difference which puts 
them in decided opposition to each other. 

11. All who have ceased to be influenced by those 
sentiments of malevolence towards the enslaved to 
which slavery owes its origin and its continuance, or 
to whom the slave-owners are not, for some reason 
or other, objects of peculiar sympathy, are apt to feel 
a high degree of commiseration for the enslaved, and 
a corresponding degree of indignation against the 
masters ; a commiseration and an indignation, which 



reach, in general, the 



highest 



pitch, with those 



whose knowledge is confined to the simple fact, that 
the one party are slaves, and the other party masters ; 



RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. 165 

but who, beyond that fact, have no personal or pre- 
cise knowledge of either party. The degraded con- 
dition of the slaves, if it makes them objects of pity, 
is very apt, at the same time, to make them objects 
of contempt ; while the superior condition of the 
masters, their wealth, authority, leisure, education, 
a,nd manners, often present them to us in a very 
agreeable light. Hence it happens that those who 
have a personal knowledge of masters and their 
slaves, not unfrequently expend all their benevo- 
lence upon the masters, while they regard the slaves 
with a malevolent contempt. 

12. Slavery, though generally condemned by mod- 
ern forensic moralists, has found numerous apologists 
and defenders among the mystics. They tell the slave 
that since God has seen fit to place him in that con- 
dition, it is his duty to be contented with his lot. 
Rebellion against his master, or any attempt to evade 
or to shake off the burdens imposed upon him, is 
neither more nor less than rebellion against God. 
The greater part of the Christian mystical doctors 
insist, and, critically speaking, with apparent reason, 
that the Christian scriptures, and especially the apos- 
tle Paul, give countenance to slavery ; and it is held, 
or at least, till very lately, it has been held by the 
highest authorities among them, that there is no in- 
consistency between the characters of a saint and a 
slave-trader, 






166 THEORY OF MORALS. 

CHAPTER III. 

OF PROMISES, CONTRACTS, AND TRUTH IN GENERAL. 

1. Closely connected with the subject of prop- 
erty, is the matter of Promises, Contracts, and Truth 
in general. He who violates a promise, or neglects 
to fulfil a contract, and to a certain extent, he who 
tells what is not true, is sure, in so doing, to inflict a 
pain of disappointment, and may inflict many other 
pains. 

2. Promises or contracts, extorted by force or 
threats, are not held to be binding. The very extor- 
tion of them was the infliction of an injury, and 
renders him who extorted them an object of ma- 
levolence and of moral disapprobation. The disap- 
pointment of such a man, instead of giving us pain, 
gives us pleasure. 

3. Promises which cannot be fulfilled, without 
violating the rights of some third party, are held not 
to be binding. When the same motive operates with 
equal force to impel us, and to deter us, of course we 
remain inactive. Hence it is held,, that no promise 
to do a wrong act is morally binding. 

4. If a man comes to me to ask for information, 
and especially if I volunteer to give him information, 
generally speaking, to give him false information 
would be doing him an unprovoked injury. Hence 
all moral codes are agreed as to the moral obligation 
of telling the truth. 



PROMISES, CONTRACTS, TRUTH. 167 

5. But suppose the information is asked with a 
design to use it as a means of inflicting injury upon 
me ? It is sought to extort my secret, in order to 
use it to my harm. He who comes to me with such 
an intent, is himself a wrong-doer, an object of ma- 
levolence ; and it is permissible for me to deceive 
him. 

6. Suppose the party in question seeks the infor- 
mation with the design to use it as a means of inflict- 
ing injury upon others ? Suppose that with an inten- 
tion to commit murder, he asks me if his intended 
victim is here, or there ? In such a case it is not 
only my right, but my duty, to deceive him ; and, 
indeed, without waiting to be asked, to volunteer 
false information. 

7. Such are the decisions of forensic morality ; 
such are the practical decisions of all rational men. 
But the mystical moralists, in general, have decided 
otherwise. According to them, the reason why I 
am bound to keep my promises, and to tell the truth, 
is, because that course of conduct is pleasing to God. 
God has an abstract delight in truth. It has further 
been imagined that if I am adjured to tell the truth 
in God's name, that is, sworn to tell the truth ; or if 
I call upon God to be the witness of my promise or 
my statements, in that case, no matter though the 
oath be extorted, and no matter what may be the 
nature of the promise, or the statement, my duty to 
God requires that I should keep the promise, or tell 
the truth, regardless of the consequences to myself 
or others. A little reflection is sufficient to convince 
us, that if truth be indeed pleasing to God merely 



■ 



168 THEORY OF MORALS. 

in its character of truth, the circumstance of an oath 
can make no difference in the moral obligation of 
speaking the truth and fulfilling promises ; and hence 
it has been concluded that to speak the truth at all 
times, is an absolute duty admitting of no excep- 
tions ; and that to deceive or even to conceal, for 
concealment is a sort of deception can never be per- 
missible. 

8. Some forensic speculators upon morals, proceed- 
ing by a different route, have arrived at the same 
conclusions. The utility of truth, that is to say, the 
advantages which veracity and general fidelity to 
engagements confer upon society, are so immense 
that it has been thought impossible to go too far in 
inculcating this duty. The means has thus come to 
be looked upon as equivalent, or superior, to the end ; 
and it has been zealously maintained that men are 
under a moral obligation to fulfil their promises, and 
to speak the truth, in all supposable cases, even in 
cases where nothing but evil seems likely to result 
from it. 

9. It ought here to be observed, that what is called 
the love or admiration of the truth, and the eulogiums 
passed upon veracity, do not by any means originate 
entirely in the moral sentiment, whether from the 
perception of the general utility of truth to mankind 
at large, or of its utility in particular cases to particu- 
lar individuals. Many sentiments purely selfish 
contribute to make truth so great a favorite. Know- 
ledge is power. Every increase of our knowledge 
enlarges our power, and gatifies the desire of superi- 
ority. The perception that we have been deceived 



PROMISES, CONTRACTS, TRUTH. 169 

or misled, is accompanied by a pain of inferiority. 
Men frequently insist upon the obligation of oaths 
and the duty of veracity, merely because they wish 
to employ them as means of increasing their own 
power, and of binding and subjecting others to the ful- 
filment of their will ; that is, as instruments of des- 
potism. Thus the subscription to creeds as a condi- 
tion of civil privileges and of the right to teach was 
first introduced by the Jesuits as a means of rees- 
tablishing the Catholic faith. The Protestants soon 
followed the example ; and both, of course, were 
very loud and very positive as to the binding obli- 
gation of such subscriptions. 

10. When we detect a man in having told us 
what is not true, a painful feeling at the idea of 
having been deceived rises in our minds. To this 
is added another painful feeling, at perceiving that 
we can no longer rely upon that man's assertions, — 
a pain of anticipation at the idea of the future deceits 
which he may put upon us. To these are added 
other painful feelings produced by the present pains 
to which this defect of veracity has exposed us, or 
by the idea of certain future pains, to which it is 
likely to expose us. All these pains thus inflict- 
ed upon us naturally excite a feeling of malevolence 
against the person who deceives ; and, quite inde- 
pendently of any sentiment of moral disapprobation, 
serve to render a liar an odious character. 

11. Mere falsehood, however, when unaccompa- 
nied with the intention to inflict some additional 
serious injury, of which the falsehood serves as an 
instrument, is a practice into which men so habitu- 

15 



170 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



ally and universally fall, that, however severely it 
may be condemned by professed moralists, in all 
practical codes of morals, it is reckoned among the 
more trivial offences. In a very large proportion of 
cases in which men deceive, they have no fixed de- 
liberate intention of doing so. With the vast major- 
ity of men the imagination is so much an over- 
match for the memory, the judgment is so sluggish, 
or so much under the influence of emotions, that it is 
impossible for them to report correctly what they 
have seen, or what they have heard. Hence that 
universal tendency to misrepresent, which leads all 
those who rely upon tradition or hearsay into infinite 
errors, even in those numerous cases where there is 
no intention to deceive. The same may be said of 
simple breach of promise, — as, for instance, the non- 
payment of debts, which, unless the debts were 
contracted with a predetermination not to pay, seems, 
in these days, to be reckoned hardly any offence at 
all. Even when there is a design to deceive, sim- 
ple falsehood when it inflicts no positive injury, as, 
for instance, putting off a dun by promises to pay 
him, or denying ourselves to persons whom we do 
not wish to see, is practically regarded as a trivial 
matter. 

12. The pain of inferiority at being detected in a 
falsehood, or a breach of contract, — for the greater 
part of falsehoods proceed from fear, and the greater 
part of breaches of contract from inability, — has, in 
general, much more influence than the sentiment of 
benevolence in inducing men to tell, the truth and 
to fulfil their engagements. There are many very 






PROxMISES, CONTRACTS' TRUTH. 171 

benevolent men whose word or promise cannot safely 
be trusted; and many men of but little benevolence 
very strict in fulfilling their engagements. 

13. But when falsehood is employed as a means 
of inflicting other additional injuries, as in the case 
of Slander, False Testimony, and Fraud, it has al- 
ways and for obvious reasons been denounced as 
among the greatest of crimes. 

14. We may here remark, that cheating in trade 
does not always spring, as is commonly supposed, 
from a mere sordid cupidity or desire of gain. To 
make a good bargain, as it is called, implies a certain 
degree of superior dexterity, a dexterity which, in a 
community of traders, comes to be highly prized, to 
be regarded, in fact, as the great test of talent. Of 
course, its possession and exercise produce a certain 
pleasure of superiority. Hence it often happens that 
men of princely fortunes, and above every imputa- 
tion of meanness, who will entertain you as a guest 
for weeks together with the most profuse liberality, 
and who are constantly performing acts of charity 
and munificence, when you come to deal with them 
as merchants, will be highly delighted at cheating 
you out of a sixpence. 

What is esteemed allowable sharpness, and what 
shall be reckoned fraud, varies greatly in different 
systems of morals. Among savages, moral sentiment 
upon this point, is, in general, sufficiently delicate. 
: The European code of honor admits upon this point 
no chicanery nor subtle distinctions. But the prac- 
tice of commerce has led to the introduction, among 
merchants and lawyers, of many refinements and 



IB 



172 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



many quibbles unknown to the simplicity of ruder 
times. 

15. Closely related to frauds are what are called 
unfair advantages ; as when I take advantage of a 
man's ignorance or his necessities, to induce him to 
make a disadvantageous contract, sale, or purchase. 
Upon this point, the mercantile and legal standard of 
moral obligation is exceedingly low. Men who 
would shrink from a positive fraud or a positive 
false statement, do not feel themselves obliged to 
communicate information which would cut them off 
from an advantageous bargain ; or to pay a higher 
price, when, by concealing certain information in 
their possession, they can compel or induce the ac- 
ceptance of a lower one. 

J.6. The doctrine of contracts, and the doctrine of 
frauds constitute two of the most important branches 
of legal learning, both of which have been very 
much complicated by the subtleties of scholastic law- 
yers, and by a profound ignorance, so universal among 
lawyers, of the real nature and foundation of moral 
distinctions. 



POLITICAL DUTIES. 173 

CHAPTER IV. 

POLITICAL DUTIES. 

1. We come now to the consideration of a class 
of duties of the most interesting and important char- 
acter, called Political Duties. The duty of obedi- 
ence to civil magistrates, and of conformity to the 
laws, and the correlative duty of legislators to make 
just and equal laws, and of magistrates to administer 
those laws with equity, are evidently founded upon 
the benefits which society derives from a settled 
government, and from just laws faithfully adminis- 
tered and submissively obeyed. 

Hence, in all forensic codes of morals, when the 
government is administered in such a way as to pro- 
duce more harm than good, or much less good than it 
might or ought to produce ; when laws are enacted 
injurious to the public ; when government, instead 
of contributing to the benefit of all, is made an in- 
strument for elevating or enriching one or a few at 
the expense of the many, civil obedience is no longer 
esteemed a duty ; in fact, it may become a duty to 
disobey, and even to rebel. 

It is, however, a matter so nice and difficult to 
determine when that point is reached which makes 
rebellion, civil war, and the danger of anarchy pre- 
ferable to further submission to a tyrannical govern- 
ment and unjust, or in other words, unequal laws, — 
that all cases of disobedience and rebellion give rise 
15* 



174 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



to infinite controversies and disputes, both as to the 
rectitude of the rebellion itself, and as to the motives 
and moral character of those engaged in it. In this 
case, as in several others, for want of any better test, 
vulgar opinion is commonly decided by the failure 
or success of the enterprise ; though that success 
often depends upon circumstances impossible for 
those who commence a revolution to foresee. We 
shall show, however, in the Theory of Politics, that 
in this particular case, this vulgar method of judg- 
ing is not destitute of a solid foundation. 

2. Mystic morality views this matter in a very 
different light. Having laid it down as a first prin- 
ciple, that man has been created by God, solely for 
God's pleasure, hence it follows, as we have seen 
already, that it is man's duty to serve God in every 
thought, word, and deed, and to obey him in all 
things. But how are the will and wishes of God to 
be known, except from those to whom he specially 
communicates them, and whom he has established 
as a separate and distinct order, peculiarly devoted 
to his service, and the special interpreters of his will ? 
Hence the duty which priests have always taught, 
of an implicit and absolute submission on the part of 
the laity, not only so far as regards actions, but even 
as regards thoughts, to the control of the priest- 
hood, the select and inspired interpreters of the will 
and pleasure of God. 

3. Thus, wherever mystical doctrines have obtain- 
ed complete sway, a theocratic despotism has been 
the result ; as, at one time, in ancient Egypt, among 
the Jews, among the Mexicans, and Peruvians, and 



POLITICAL DUTIES. 175 

at present, in the territories of the Pope and the 
Lama. The Saracen Caliphs, the successors of Ma- 
hornet, claimed to be God's supreme vicegerants upon 
earth, and the present Turkish sultans pretend to be 
the successors of the caliphs, and to be entitled to ex- 
ercise the same spiritual despotism. The emperor of 
Russia is head of the church as well as of the state, 
and there can be no perfect and permanent despotism, 
where these functions are not united. It seems likely 
that theocracy prevailed at one time throughout In- 
dia. It existed among the Druids, in ancient Gaul 
and Britain, and, perhaps, had some influence in mak- 
ing the inhabitants of those countries, already accus- 
tomed to servitude, fall a prey to Roman conquerors 
whom the freer Germans successfully resisted. 

Wherever theocracy has long prevailed, it has pro- 
duced an enervating effect, against which even the 
fervors of religious enthusiasm, which are always 
limited to a few, and which soon become exhausted, 
furnish but a doubtful and unsteady counterbalance. 
Theocracy, during the Middle Ages, came to the 
very point of consolidating all Europe into one great 
papal monarchy. Evident traces, even very perfect 
specimens of it, are to be found among the most sav- 
age tribes of Africa, America, and the South Sea. 
It has laid the foundation of many empires, and has 
prevailed so universally, that even the candid, acute, 
and philosophic Guizot has been seduced into the 
conclusion, that it is an element essential to civiliza- 
tion. Without stopping here to controvert that opin- 
ion, we will only remark, that wherever theocracy 
has been permanently established, or has approached 



176 THEORY OF MORALS. 

towards establishment, as in modern Spain and Italy, 
and in the Spanish and Portuguese conquests and 
colonies, it has proved the most fatal bar to all free- 
dom, whether of thought or action ; and has con- 
gealed society to a condition almost perfectly sta- 
tionary. 5 * 

The struggle of Christian mysticism, and of the 
theocracies attempted to be founded upon it, first, 
with Paganism, the ancient philosophies, and the 
civil institutions of Rome ; next with the supersti- 
tions of the North, and those moral and political cus- 
toms and ideas which the destroyers of the Roman 
Empire brought with them from the woods of Ger- 
many and the plains of Sarmatia; thirdly, with 
numberless new systems of mysticism, which, under 
the name of heresies, have been constantly springing 
out of its own bosom ; fourthly, with the simpler, 
more rational, and in some respects, more captivating 
doctrine preached by Mahomet ; fifthly, with the 
kings, princes, nobles, and burghers of Europe ; and 
sixthly, with the advancing knowledge and philoso- 
phy of modern times ; these events form the most 
interesting and instructive leaf in the fragments 
which we possess, of the history of mankind. 

4. The priesthood, alike during the infant weak- 
ness of theocracy, and when it begins to tremble 
under the decrepitude of age, have affected to con- 
tent themselves with controlling the thoughts and 
private actions of mankind ; and have courted the 
aid, or at least the countenance, of the civil magis- 
trates, by ostentatiously yielding up to them all 

* This subject will be fully considered in the Theory of Politics . 



POLITICAL DUTIES. 177 

control of civil and political affairs. Hence the doc- 
trine, that those who have power govern by divine 
ordination ; and that passive obedience to the pow- 
ers that be, is a duty to God. This, indeed, is an 
obvious and necessary deduction from that pure mys- 
ticism which ascribes all existences and events to 
immediate volitions of the Deity. 

5. This doctrine is equally applicable to all forms 
of government. When it is kings who are in power, 
kings have a divine right to govern. Under aris- 
tocracies, this same divine right belongs to the aris- 
tocracy ; and whenever democracy begins to rear 
its head, we presently begin to hear of the divine 
right of democracies. Indeed, it is an ancient mys- 
tical maxim, that the voice of the people is the voice 
of God ; a maxim which came into vogue at a time 
when the priesthood were the people's spokesmen, 
and when they employed the name and the strength 
of the people for the accomplishment of their own 
private ends.* 

The priesthood, in every age and country, readily 
become the advocates of those who rule de facto. 
Whoever gets the power, no matter how, the priests 
are ready to crown and consecrate. A Charlemagne, 
a Bonaparte, a William the Third, a George the 
First, a Louis-Philippe, have, in their eyes, a much 



* As, for instance, during the civil wars of France, when the popu- 
lace of Paris and the large towns was leagued with Philip the Second 
of Spain, the Pope, and the Guises, against Henry the Fourth, and 
the Protestants. The Jesuits held doctrines, at that time, as to the 
right of the people to depose kings, not at all short of those which > 
two centuries after, brought Louis the Sixteenth to the block. 






178 THEORY OF MORALS. 

more divine right than a Merovingian, a Stuart, a 
Bourbon, from whom the sceptre has departed. Pos- 
session, in their view, provided always that the pos- 
sessor will allow them to come in for a certain share 
of influence and reverence, is not only nine-tenths of 
the law, but a perfect right. The vicar of Bray is 
their type and representative. In this respect they 
are true waiters upon Providence, consistent adher- 
ents of the pure mystic theory, their conformity be- 
ing less dishonest than it is commonly represented. 

6. The doctrine of the divine right of kings to 
govern, and of the moral obligation of the people to 
obey and to submit, though apparently taught with 
great emphasis and precision in St. Paul's Epistles, 
and though generally inculcated by the Christian 
Fathers in the early days of Christianity, fell into 
total neglect, during the efforts of the Gregories, the 
Paschals, and the Innocents, to establish the univer- 
sal monarchy of the Popedom. In those times, a 
divine right was claimed for the clergy, over kings 
as well as over the people. At the period, however, 
of the great Protestant rebellion, the doctrine of the 
divine right of princes was revived as a means of 
keeping the kings of Europe faithful to the Catholic 
creed. Their assistance was further secured by 
sharing with them a large proportion of the property 
and patronage of the church ; an expedient which 
proved perfectly successful, except with Henry the 
Eighth of England, who was involved in a personal 
quarrel with the Pope, and in the four northern 
kingdoms of Scotland, Sweden, Norway, and Den- 
mark, in which the nobility were at blows with their 



POLITICAL DUTIES. 179 

sovereigns who remained faithful to the Holy See ; 
and where the wealth of the church, seized upon 
by the rebellious nobles, made them great zealots 
in the Protestant cause. 

The Protestant clergy were driven, in conse- 
quence, to adopt a similar policy. They surrender- 
ed up to their princes and supporters a great portion 
of the church revenues and patronage ; and soon be- 
gan to outbid the Catholics, in the zeal with which 
they preached the doctrine of the divine right of 
kings.* 



* Calvin and Knox, though they acknowledged the divine right of 
civil government, maintained, and the more sturdy of their followers 
have maintained to this day, the entire independence of the church, 
or, to speak more plainly, the rightful subordination of the state to 
the Church, in all spiritual matters, which may easily be made to 
mean, all matters. In thi3 opinion they coincide exactly with Bellar- 
mine and the Jesuits ; and have gone a good deal beyond the body of 
the modern Catholic doctors. But the greater part of the English 
Reformers, except those who were infected with Calvinism, as well 
as Luther, adopted the courtly creed of the divine right of princes 
to a much greater extent than did the Catholic clergy, maintaining 
the Erastian doctrine of the divine right of kings to rule the church 
as well as the people. 

Luther, indeed, would willingly have stickled for the absolute inde- 
pendency and supreme power of the elect ; but circumstances com- 
pelled him to modify his doctrine. " The sect of the Anabaptists was 
founded by Nicholas Storch, Mark Stubner, and Thomas Munzer, in 
1521. It was founded upon the abuse of a doctrine which they had 
read in a book published by Luther, in 1520, ' De Libertate Chris- 
tiana, in which he asserted, ' that a Christian man is master of every 
thing, and is subject to no one.' " Bayles Dictionary, art. Anabap- 
tist. " Luther, perceiving that many accused him of giving occasion 
to this rebellion (that is, the Anabaptist rebellion), by the book that 
he had written in the vulgar tongue, in defence of Evangelical liberty 
against the tyranny of those who overlaid it by human tradition, an- 
swered that accusation in a long discourse, in which he showed them 



180 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



7. Though the doctrine of the divine right of 
kings was of mystical origin, the doctrine of the m- 
defeasible right of kings, which by a different road 
reached the same point of unlimited despotism, origi- 
nated in forensic and feudal ideas. Under the feudal 
system, the right of property and the right to govern 
were indissolubly connected ; and hence by degrees 
these two rights came to be confounded together, as 
if they had been one and the same. According to 
the theory of the feudal system, which was, indeed, 
nothing but a legal fiction, the king was the source 
of all power, and also the source of all property ; all 
titles, both those of honor and jurisdiction, and those 
of private possession, being traced back, if not histori- 
cally, at least assumptively, to his gift. Certain ju- 
risdictions were annexed to certain estates, and both 
became hereditary together. Hence sprang the idea 
that the king had the same right to rule that the 
subject had to the property he possessed ; if not, 
indeed, a prior and superior right ; and that it would 
be just as great a violation of justice, if not greater, 
to deprive the king of his crown, as to deprive the 
subject of his estate. Thus arose that strong feeling 
of loyalty which once reigned in European monar- 
chies, and which, yet, is not wholly extinct ; and 



that the scripture enjoins obedience to princes and magistrates, even 
though they should abuse the power which God had intrusted them 
with ; that they ought to address themselves to God, and in the mean 
time, suffer with patience, in expectation of his good pleasure ; and 
that the way of arms which they had taken up, would be the occasion 
of their damnation, if they refused to lay them down." Mainbourg's 
" History of Luther anism" Book I., as cited by Bayle. 



POLITICAL DUTIES. 181 

hence the political doctrines of Hobbes, who, though 
an innovator in philosophy, was a conservative in 
politics, and an enthusiastic lover of peace, greatly 
alarmed at the revolutionary spirit of his times. He 
attempted to supply a philosophical basis for these 
feudal notions of kingly right, and taught, that, men 
having once conferred absolute authority on a prince, 
as the only means of escaping out of an original and 
natural state of anarchy and private war, the right 
to govern thus conferred, like the original distribu- 
tion of landed property, was morally indefeasible and 
for ever binding, and for precisely the same reason, 
to wit, the good of society. In more modern phrase, 
the right of the king to govern had become a vested 
right, which could not be disregarded without fa- 
tal consequences. Society, for its own benefit, had 
armed the prince with unlimited power, and for the 
sake of escaping the greater evils of perpetual anar- 
chy, had consented beforehand to every thing he 
might do. Absolute power in the prince being es- 
sential to the welfare of society, no imaginable mis- 
conduct on his part could justify resistance to his 
authority, since the anarchy and universal war of 
men against each other, which must result from the 
overthrow of an established government, is a far 
greater evil than any isolated or temporary acts of 
oppression. The conclusion of Hobbes, though he 
was very little of a mystic, was precisely that of 
Luther. Princes are not responsible to their subjects, 
but only to God. 

But though the right to rule was morally inde- 
feasible, that is to say, not to be defeated without a 
16 






182 THEORY OF MORALS. 

great violation of right, a great crime, Hobbes held, 
that, this crime being once committed, the usurper 
stood exactly in the position of the former ruler, and 
was equally entitled to implicit submission. In this 
point he departed from the feudal doctrine, for the 
sake of escaping those destructive wars of succession 
which had grown out of it. 

The English clergy detested Hobbes's system of 
philosophy and morals not so much from any par- 
ticular errors in it, as because, being founded upon 
reason and observation, and not upon authority, it 
struck a great and fatal blow at mysticism, and 
however narrow and erroneous in many particulars, 
yet tended directly and avowedly towards the eman- 
cipation of mankind from priestly domination. But 
they were delighted with his conservative politics, 
which seemed to tend the other way ; and while 
they repulsed him with one hand, they caressed him 
v with the other. This same odd procedure upon their 
part was repeated over again in the case of Hume, 
and for similar reasons. 

8. Against Hobbes and the bishops, against the 
doctrines of the divine right, and of the indefeasible 
right of kings, it was argued by Locke and the Eng- 
lish Whigs, that if kings and governments have 
rights as against their subjects, they have also duties 
towards them ; duties for the performance of which 
they are responsible, not only to God, but to man ; 
the non-performance of which duties works a forfeit- 
ure of their rights, and creates in the people a right 
of resistance and revolution. 

9. But the English Whigs were aristocrats and 



POLITICAL DUTIES. 183 

even monarchists ; the friends of liberty and equality 
took higher ground. They availed themselves of 
the admission of Hobbes, that all men are naturally 
equal, and following in the footsteps of Locke, pre- 
sently hit upon the idea of setting up the natural 
7 % ights of men, as a counterpart to the divine right of 
kings, priests, and nobles. The terms, nature and 
natural rights, possessed a happy ambiguity very 
favorable to the spread of these new ideas. With 
those whom the instructions of their childhood, 
habit, and general consent, still kept adherents to the 
mystic hypothesis, nature was but another name for 
God, and natural rights were rights emanating from 
the Divine will ; in fact, Divine rights. But while 
these terms corresponded so well to mystical ideas, 
they were also fully susceptible of a philosophic in- 
terpretation. Nature, in the philosophic sense, is the 
apparent constitution of things, such as men perceive 
and feel it ; and natural rights are the rights which 
spring out of that constitution of things. According 
to the exposition of morality contained in this trea- 
tise, the Natural Rights of men are those benefits from 
others, and that abstinence on the part of others from 
the infliction of pains, which the average force of the 
moral sentiment gives us ground to expect. Of 
course, they are not fixed, but always varying with 
the varying average force of the sentiment of benev- 
olence. 

10. But the partisans of Natural Rights, ignorant 
of their true nature, that is, of the true foundation of 
moral distinctions, following the scholastic instead 
of the inductive method of reasoning, and anxious 



184 THEORY OF MORALS. 

to encounter the arrogant pretensions of kings, priests, 
and nobles, by corresponding pretensions on the 
part of the people, fell into paradoxes which ex- 
posed their doctrine to danger and disgrace. They 
attempted to set aside the indefeasible rights of kings 
maintained by their opponents, by setting up against 
them the doctrine of the absolute indefeasibility of 
all natural rights. Thus they pronounced life, lib- 
erty, and the pursuit of happiness to be indefeasi- 
ble and unalienable rights ; a doctrine which has 
been justly characterized, when thus broadly laid 
down, as utterly anarchical ; since, if these rights be 
really indefeasible, every restraint of any kind is 
against right; and government itself becomes a 
wrong. We have shown elsewhere how the as- 
sumption of the identity of benevolence and virtue 
leads to the same paradoxical results.* 



* The leaders of the American and French Revolutions made great 
use of the doctrine of the Natural Rights of Man. They figure at 
length in the American Declaration of Independence, and in the 
American and French Constitutions. The authority of Rousseau, 
who was the most eloquent advocate of this doctrine, is well known 
to have been paramount during the early days of the French Repub- 
lic. The mysticism with which Rousseau was so much imbued 
combined with other causes to produce in his followers a political 
fanaticism, which differed but in some trifling particulars from the 
religious fanaticism of two centuries previous. The idea of the pub- 
lic good in the one case, like the idea of the will of God in the other, 
almost extinguished any mercy for individuals considered hostile 
to those great objects. Robespierre, it is well known, was Rous- 
seau's devoted disciple. He has been as much misrepresented and 
belied as ever Cromwell was, though far more honest. It has become 
the fashion to make him the scapegoat for all the crimes of the French 
Revolution. I am astonished to find such a writer as Carlyle pan- 
dering to so vulgar and unjust a prejudice. I am still more astonish- 



POLITICAL DUTIES. 185 

11. Laying aside, as untenable, the idea of inde- 
feasible rights, whether natural or divine, either on 
the part of governors or the governed, the duties of 
good citizenship include all the duties of private 
morality ; and in addition, a certain readiness to 
make sacrifices and to submit to pains and labors for 
the benefit of the community. It is this disposition 
which we denominate Patriotism or Public Spirit. 
The ordinary degree in which it exists differs great- 
ly under different forms of government. In theoc- 
racies and most absolute monarchies, it is hardly 
found at all. Under such governments, the ruling 
power is all, the community is nothing ; and patriot- 
ism is replaced by obedience and loyalty. In aris- 
tocracies, among members of the privileged class, it 
frequently reaches a high pitch. In democracies it 
becomes diffused through the whole body of the 
people. In mystical systems of morals the virtue of 
patriotism is hardly recognized ; in forensic systems 
the rank it holds in any given community depends 
upon the extent, in that community, of political 
rights. 



ed to find him lavishing so much admiration upon Mirabeau and Dan- 
ton, men more showy, but not more able, and far below Robespierre 
in disinterestedness. Robespierre asked nothing for himself but power, 
which power he intended to use for the public good. Mirabeau and 
Danton wanted power just as much, but they wanted it as a means 
of amassing money to be lavished in luxurious indulgence. The 
leading idea of Robespierre was, the rescue of France from kings and 
aristocrats : the leading idea of the other two, to provide for them- 
selves. 

16* 



186 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



CHAPTER V. 



OF THE UNEQUAL BURDEN OF DUTY IMPOSED ON WOMEN, 
AND HEREIN OF CHASTITY. 



1. In attempting an explication of the variations 
and contradictions which exist in moral codes so far 
as pertains to the mutual and relative duties of men 
and women, and of the unequal burden of duty com- 
monly imposed upon women, we must begin by 
recollecting that the opinion has almost universally 
prevailed, that woman is naturally inferior and sub- 
ordinate to man, and, like other inferior creatures, 
rightfully to be used as an instrument for promoting 
his pleasure. 

The obvious inferiority of women in personal 
strength has led to the conclusion of a general infe- 
riority. This opinion of inferiority has naturally 
produced a certain degree of contempt ; which has 
naturally operated to diminish the force of the sen- 
timent of benevolence ; and, therefore, to fix the 
standard of men's duty to women below that of their 
duty towards each other. 

2. Among savages who are struggling perpetually 
against hunger, at the same time that they are en- 
gaged in exterminating wars, the sentiment of be- 
nevolence is at the lowest ebb ; and the wife is not 
so much the companion as the slave of her husband, 
purchased, indeed, of her parents, compelled to con- 
stant hard labor, and exposed to suffer personal chas- 
tisement. 



DUTIES OF WOMEN. — CHASTITY. 187 

Yet even here, beauty and the sexual sentiment 
so far reinforce the sentiment of benevolence, that, 
for the short time her charms last, the young wife of 
the savage is treated with a tenderness and indul- 
gence which disappear as she grows older and less 
inviting. However petted at first, she soon expe- 
riences the double mortification of finding herself a 
mere domestic drudge, and her place in her husband's 
affections supplied by a younger and handsomer 
rival. For, in savage and barbarous communities, 
every man is thought entitled to as many wives as 
he can purchase and maintain ; and, though compar- 
ative equality and universal poverty have commonly 
prevented polygamy from being carried, in such 
communities, to any great extent, it has in no such 
community been esteemed wrong. 

3. The increase of wealth, which constitutes one 
of the items of increasing civilization, of course de- 
livers the women of wealthy families from the mere 
drudgery of servitude. Yet they still remain slaves, 
and commonly purchased slaves, the great end of 
whose existence is still esteemed to be, the pleasure 
of their husband and owner, which they are now 
thought most able to promote, not so much by hard 
labor as by elegant accomplishments and refine- 
ments in the gratification of the sexual appetite, — 
things of which the savage has very little idea. 

Lest they might be withdrawn from the fulfilment 
of this duty, it is considered expedient and just to 
seclude them from all other society ; to shut them 
up in a harem as the Greeks did and the Orientals 
do ; or like the Chinese, so to mutilate their feet, as 



188 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



to make them almost incapable of walking abroad. 
Nor do the women accustomed to this sort of treat- 
ment, and never having conceived of any other, as 
yet regard it as a hardship. They rather glory in 
it as a mark of consideration, whereby women of 
the upper class are distinguished from those below 
them. 

4. Humanity, however, has, by this time, consid- 
erably increased ; and the pain which women inevi- 
tably feel at finding their places filled, and their 
consequence and pleasures curtailed by younger and 
handsomer rivals, is so great and so obvious, that it 
begins to be deemed no more than just, to provide a 
remedy against this evil, — so far as it may be done, 
without trenching at all upon the pleasures of the 
husband. Thus, in such communities, it comes to 
be established as a custom, and, presently, as a rule, 
that not the last married, youngest, and most beauti- 
ful wife, as in ruder states of society, but the first 
married, the oldest wife, is esteemed the mistress of 
the household, and the superior, in some respects, by 
virtue of her prior marriage, of the other younger 
wives. 

5. So soon as society begins to be divided into 
ranks and orders, a distinction also springs up be- 
tween those wives whose fathers are of the same 
social rank with the husband, and who are no longer 
sold, but given in marriage, and those wives who 
are of an inferior rank, — perhaps the husband's born, 
or purchased slaves. Those of the first class mo- 
nopolize the title of wives, and compel those of the 
second class to be content with the inferior name 



DUTIES OF WOMEN CHASTITY. 189 

and station of concubines, — a distinction presently- 
made to extend to the children. 

6. Parental affection on the part of fathers who 
have daughters to bestow in marriage, seconding the 
natural desire of women to have no rival in their 
husband's house, and aided by increasing benevo- 
lence on the part of the men, gradually leads to stip- 
ulations that the husband shall take no other wife 
while the first lives. He is allowed, as an indemni- 
ty, as many concubines as he chooses ; but the in- 
creasing complaints of the wife, and increasing 
regard for her feelings, presently dictate, that these 
concubines shall no longer be kept in the same 
house ; and, indeed, that their being kept at all shall 
be as little as possible brought to her notice. What 
was at first a matter of stipulation, or of favor in 
particular cases, comes, presently, to be viewed as no 
more than ordinary justice towards the wife in all 
cases ; so that, at last, open polygamy, or the living 
as a husband with two women in the same house, 
comes to be commonly regarded as an injurious, and, 
consequently, an immoral act. Doubtless, the men 
were somewhat hastened in arriving at this conclu- 
sion by the inconvenience to themselves, the disor- 
der, clamor, envy, hatred, and jealousy, so apt to 
prevail in polygamous households. 

Such would seem to have been the steps, by 
which the doctrine of monogamy, or of the marriage 
of one man to one woman, came, in certain commu- 
nities, to be established as part of the current code 
of morals. This doctrine owed its establishment to 
an increased force, on the part of men towards 



190 THEORY OF MORALS. 






women, of the sentiment of benevolence, resultmg, 
in part, from a general increase of the force of that 
sentiment, but partially also from an increased ad- 
miration of women, and respect for them, which 
advanced much in the same proportion as mere per- 
sonal strength lost its relative importance. The same 
causes naturally tended, at the same time, to release 
women from that strict seclusion in which they had 
been held, and to allow them a certain liberty of as- 
sociating with the male friends of their husbands 
and fathers. 

7. Such were the ideas and customs that prevailed 
among the Romans, and were communicated by them 
to the conquered tribes of Western Europe, and, sub- 
sequently, to the conquering tribes from the East 
and North who subdued the western portions of the 
Roman Empire ; and which thus have descended 
to our times, modified only by certain mystic opin- 
ions to be presently considered. 

Though in the progress above described women 
had gained much, they had by no means approached 
towards a social equality with men. By the Roman 
law, the unmarried daughter remained in strict sub- 
jection to her father ; and the husband had the same 
authority over the wife that he had over his children, 
that is, the superintendence and control of all her 
actions ; arid, throughout Christendom, the letter of 
the existing law is still* much the same. The 
greatest act of justice on the part of the Roman 
Law towards woman, consisted in the admission of 
the daughters to an equal share with the sons, in the 
inheritance of the father ; and, subsequently, in al- 



DUTIES OF WOMEN. — CHASTITY. 191 

lowing the wife to possess property of her own, 
with which her husband could not meddle, — great 
advantages, which some modern codes, especially 
the English, have not conceded. 

According to the letter of our modern current 
codes of morals, the wife is still held bound to obey 
her husband in all things ; and no matter how obvi- 
ous her physical or intellectual superiority, the repu- 
tation of being governed by her, subjects the hus- 
band to ridicule, and the wife to reproach. Though 
she be allowed a certain liberty, yet there are many 
things held perfectly innocent in men, which she is 
not permitted to do ; many places, which, under any 
circumstances, she is not allowed to frequent ; and 
many more, to which she can go only under the es- 
cort of her husband, or some near male relative. In 
all these respects, unmarried women are subjected to 
still greater restraints. 

8. But the most remarkable distinction in mod- 
ern forensic moral codes between male and female 
morality, relates to the indulgence of the sexual 
sentiment ; indeed, almost all the other existing 
distinctions may be traced to that. It is held that 
no possible circumstances can justify or excuse a 
woman, in the gratification of this sentiment, except 
with a husband. Should she not obtain a husband, 
she is held bound to be content with a life of perpet- 
ual virginity. # Indeed, unmarried women are re- 

* On this point, the Roman law was more indulgent. If the father 
did not provide his daughter with a husband, before she reached the 
age of twenty-five, he was not allowed to make any subsequent slip 
on her part, a pretence for disinheriting her. 



192 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



quired not to know or feel, at least, never to give 
any signs of knowing or feeling, that there is such a 
thing as sexual desire ; and they are taught to regard 
the discovery in themselves of any such feeling, not 
as a natural emotion which prudence requires them 
to keep under control, but as a detestable and dis- 
graceful vice, a ground of inferiority and self- 
reproach, a criminality to be expiated by tears and 
self-abasement. 

Adultery in a wife is esteemed the most disgrace- 
ful of crimes, exposing her, even in communities in 
which divorce is allowed for no other cause, to de- 
gradation from her station of wife, if not to imprison- 
ment or even death. 

The crime of sexual indulgence in an unmarried 
woman, is esteemed hardly less. If discovered, it 
subjects her to the utmost obloquy, delivers her up, 
without .possibility of grace or repentance, to utter 
infamy, — an infamy which extends even to her in- 
nocent offspring, -r— and condemns her, for the most 
part, to live by prostitution, and to die soon and 
wretched. 

So far is this idea carried, that, in current dis- 
course, female virtue means nothing but chastity ; 
an unmarried woman who has lost her virginity is 
familiarly said to be ruined, and, though it may have 
been taken from her by force, and against her con- 
sent, she is, nevertheless, irretrievably disgraced. An 
apparent, rather than a real, exception to these harsh 
decrees, exists in some countries of Europe, in favor 
of acknowledged concubines, who, though unmar- 



DUTIES OF WOMEN. — CHASTITY. 193 

ried, still live faithfully with one man.* This, 
however, is properly to be considered as a species 
of marriage sanctioned by custom, though not ac- 
knowledged by the law. It differs from the legal 
marriage in being dissoluble at the pleasure of either 
party, and generally in being contracted with some 
woman of inferior rank whom a man could not take 
as his wife without the obloquy of having disgraced 
himself. If, as often happens, the man has also a legal 
wife, it is then to be considered as the last remains 
of that system of polygamy, the disuse and disap- 
pearance of which we have already traced. 

9. While such extreme severity is exercised to- 
wards women, current forensic morals, and in this 
all forensic codes ancient and modern seem to have 
agreed, allow to men, if not entire liberty, a very 
great laxity. Even adultery and seduction — acts 
evidently so injurious, in the one case, to the hus- 
band, in the other, to an entire family thereby dis- 
graced, and in both cases, to the woman whom these 
acts expose to such a combination of miseries — are 
still, for the most part, and except in cases of partic- 
ular aggravation, looked upon, in a man, almost or 
quite, as permissible acts. Even in communities 
which lay claim to the greatest strictness upon this 
point, a suspected adulterer, a more than suspected 
seducer, is not, therefore, incapacitated for the high 
stewardship of an Orthodox university, or the lord 



* See some very sensible remarks upon this subject, in Dr. John 
Moore's " View of Society and Manners in Italy." Also Bentham's 
" Theory of Legislation," Vol. II. Part IV. Ch. 5. 

17 



194 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



chancellorship, or other the highest trusts, of the 
realm ; and in humbler life, though somewhat talked 
of and censured, such an offender, if rich, and pos- 
sessing a certain station in society, is viewed with 
a sort of admiration, by which the disapproval 
of his conduct is very much modified ; and among 
the women, who suffer most by him, according to a 
very current and probably not wholly baseless, opin- 
ion, he becomes at once a hero and a favorite. 

Such being the light in which adulterers and 
seducers are regarded, it is not remarkable that sim- 
ple sexual intercourse with unmarried women even 
on the part of married men, and still more of un- 
married, — except in a very few communities in 
which ascetic mysticism prevails to an unusual de- 
gree, — is so far from being esteemed criminal, that 
virginity on the part of an adult man, is regarded as 
a mark of pusillanimity, and a matter for ridicule. * 

10. The question at once presents itself, upon 
what ground is this very strong distinction made 
between the conduct of women and of men ? Why 
are acts, which in men are esteemed innocent, per- 
missible, or, at worst, but slightly wrong, regarded 
in women as the height of iniquity ? 



* For the correctness of the above statements, the reader, if he has 
any doubts, is referred to the Romances of Chivalry, Chaucer, Boccac- 
cio, Shakspeare, Lope de Vega, and the comedies and tales of Mod- 
ern Europe, down to the last new French or German novel. There 
are more jokes in Shakspeare upon cuckolds, than upon any other 
subject. The English of the present day are not so free in their talk, 
or, at least, in their writings; — but, except the professed religious, 
who, among the men, are comparatively few, their sentiments and 
conduct are much the same. 



DUTIES OF WOMEN. — CHASTITY. 195 

The answer to this question is to be found, partly 
in the inferior and dependent position in which 
women stand ; and partly, in the peculiar results, 
which, in their case, are liable to follow from sexual 
indulgence. 

The woman, from her inferior position, and from 
the consequent admiration and love with which she 
is expected to look up to her husband, is held bound 
to a certain extent, indeed to a very great extent, to 
prefer his pleasures to her own. The idea of sole 
possession is so gratifying to the sentiment of self- 
comparison, that men naturally, everywhere, have 
held their wives bound to strict fidelity ; and the 
wife's intercourse with another man, without the 
husband's consent, — which in most communities it 
has been esteemed disgraceful ever to grant, and 
which, elsewhere, has only been granted as a special 
mark of favor and friendship, — that is to say, adul- 
tery on the part of the wife, has everywhere, and at 
all times, been esteemed a high crime. • Upon this 
point, some nations, such as the Arabs, the Hindoos, 
the Turks, and the Orientals generally, have run 
into what we regard as very extravagant ideas ; so 
that, even to look at another man's wife, is a deadly 
insult. Hence, in those countries, to enter a man's 
harem, and especially to expose the women of it to 
the public gaze, is reckoned the greatest indignity 
which it is possible to inflict. Hence, too, that re- 
markable custom of the Hindoos, which requires the 
wife to immolate herself upon the funeral pile of her 
husband. In general, the wife does it voluntarily, 
— a striking instance how easily, at least in the fe- 



196 



THEORY OF MORALS, 



male mind, the sense of duty triumphs even over the 
fear of death ; and a proof, too, how desirable it is, 
that so potent a sentiment should receive a true 
direction. 

In savage and barbarous communities, .women 
who owe no allegiance to a husband, are not held 
bound to any such strictness ; but are allowed to 
indulge themselves at their pleasure. This custom 
is universal among the native tribes of America 
and tropical Africa, whence it has been transported 
to the West Indies, where women, who are ex- 
pected to preserve, and who do preserve, a very 
strict fidelity after marriage, while unmarried allow 
themselves and are allowed a wide liberty. 

But the same feeling which demands fidelity in a 
wife, accompanied by a little more reflection, present- 
ly requires, that the wife should come a virgin to her 
husband's bed ; and when this idea obtains currency, 
unmarried women are thenceforth required to pre- 
serve their virginity for the honor and pleasure of 
the husband whom they may one day have. 

With the progress of wealth and refinement, 
women of the upper class become more and more 
helpless ; whence arises an additional reason, why 
the unmarried should not expose themselves to the 
risk of bearing children. The unmarried savage 
mother who brings home her new born babe to her 
father's lodge,, in so doing, imposes no labor nor 
trouble upon anybody but herself. It is she who 
will nurse and educate the child. In civilized soci- 
eties, especially in the upper ranks, — whence the 
lower ranks, by imitation, derive most of their cus- 



DUTIES OF WOMEN.— CHASTITY. 197 

toms, — the situation of unmarried women is totally- 
different. For the most part, they are incapable of 
providing for themselves. Even if they have the 
requisite talent and skill, they are excluded from 
following any lucrative occupation. In some coun- 
tries, as in England, they are greatly restricted even 
in their chances of acquiring property by inherit- 
ance ; of course, they seldom have means of their 
own. They are totally dependent, even for their 
own support, upon their fathers or other relatives ; 
and it would be intolerable, if, for their own private 
gratification, in addition to the burden of supporting 
themselves, they should impose upon their- friends 
the support and education of a family of children. 
The same reason applies also to the case of married 
women. The husband is bound to support and to 
educate the children of his wife ; and he reasonably 
desires them to be, not only legally but naturally 
his own. 

11. The position of men is altogether different. 
Even the married man, for the same reason of infe- 
riority on the part of his wife for which he demands 
from her the sacrifice of her pleasures to his, holds 
himself by no means bound to reciprocate that sac- 
rifice ; or, for the sake of gratifying her feelings, to 
put restraint upon his own indulgences. The un- 
married man has nobody's feelings to consult. As 
men, married or unmarried, who become the fathers 
of illegitimate children, are legally bound to sup- 
port those children, here is no burden imposed upon 
others, except that duty be fraudulently evaded, or 
the father be too poor to fulfil it; in which case, 
17* 



198 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



only, an offence is committed of ivhieh the law 
takes note. As to the mother 7 the very infamy with 
which she is overwhelmed leaves little room, in the 
vulgar mind, for sympathy for her ; and the disgrace 
to her parents and other friends is disposed of, by as- 
cribing the daughter's ruin to the fault, on their part, 
of a bad education or insufficient watching. 

12. Whatever may be thought of other cases, the 
evils which are constantly arising from adultery and 
seduction are so intense, that the indulgence with 
which forensic morals regards these acts on the part 
of men can only be explained, by supposing that 
the force of the sentiment impelling to the perform- 
ance of these acts, is so powerful, as often to be 
more than a match for the ordinary force of the sen- 
timent of benevolence. But sexual desire is by nat- 
ural constitution not less powerful, it probably is 
more powerful in women than in men ; and hence 
the necessity for those terrible cruelties and terrible 
disgraces, cruelties and disgraces intended to oper- 
ate upon the fear of death and of bodily pain, and 
the still more potent sentiment of self-comparison, 
by which it is sought to restrain and counterbalance 
this powerful impulse ; and hence, too, as has been 
already observed, the origin of most of those re- 
strictions to which women are subjected. The Ori- 
entals employ bolts, bars, eunuchs, and madonnas ; 
we, more ingenious, have converted the women uni- 
versally into spies upon each other ; an employment, 
affording as it does such easy opportunities to exalt 
themselves by degrading others, that they enter upon 
it with thoughtless zeal, finding self-exaltation and 



DUTIES OF WOMEN. — CHASTITY. 199 

thence delight in the degradation and misery of 
their less fortunate sisters. The Orientals enclose the 
offender alive in a sack and cast her into the sea ; 
we subject her to the more lingering and terrible 
punishment of a frightful life complicated out of 
those greatest of evils, infamy, disease, and want. 

13. Did these severities accomplish their object, 
that would afford a plausible argument in their 
favor. But they fail, and always will. While men 
constitute a licensed army of seducers, licensed be- 
cause they cannot be restrained, can it be expected 
that women will resist the combined force of male 
and female desire ? The poets have admired and 
have celebrated the triumphs of sexual love over all 
possible obstacles put in its way : and legislators and 
moralists might learn a lesson from the poets. The 
only adequate security for the chastity of women is 
that also which can alone secure the chastity of 
men, — for the one is impossible without the other, 
— the indulgence of a happy and lawful' love;* 
and the problem is, how may such unions, without 
the danger of greater evils than those they are in- 
tended to remedy, be made more attainable ? This 
problem appertains, in part, to political economy, or 
what we call the Theory of Wealth ; but so far as 
it depends upon the terms of the marriage contract, 
and the dissolution of existing unhappy unions, that 



* M Hail wedded Love, mysterious law, true source 
Of human offspring, sole propriety 
In paradise of all things common else 
By thee adulterous lust was driven from men," &c. 

Paradise Lost, Book IV. 1. 750 et seq. 






200 



THEORY OF MORALS, 



is, upon Divorce, it belongs to the department of 
Morals and Legislation.* 

It is solely to the early marriages of choice which 
prevail in America and Ireland, that we must ascribe 
the boasted purity of American and Irish women. 
In England and Scotland, where the "prudential 
check " is in full operation, the Reports of the Poor 
Law Commissioners show how utterly powerless to 
secure the chastity of women are all the severities of 
forensic morals, even when backed by all the terrors 
of mysticism, and of law.f 

14. But, although women have everywhere been 
held in a degree of subordination greater or less, 
there have been and are, societies in which they 
have made a near approach towards equality. Of 
this sort were the saloons of Paris before the Revo- 



* Divorces are allowed, in most European codes, only for adultery, 
and for that only on the part of the wife ; though Milton has shown 
conclusively enough, in his " Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," 
that there are many other things not less fatal to the harmony and 
comfort of a marriage. See, on this subject, Bentham " On Legis- 
lation," Vol. I. Part III., ch. 5. 

One great obstacle in the way of separations by mutual consent 
would be removed, by establishing, what justice clearly demands, 
that the custody of the children should appertain to the mother, 
while the father should be held bound to bear the chief burden of 
their support, at least until the mother obtained another husband. 
Such is the custom of the West Indies, where the legal Euro- 
pean marriage is, for the most part, replaced by that customary mar- 
riage above referred to, a marriage not recognized by the laws and 
dissoluble at the pleasure of either party. 

t It appears by these Reports, that marriages among the laborers in 
the rural districts of England, seldom take place till the pregnancy 
of the woman exposes the man to a poor law prosecution. As to 
sanctimonious Scotland (where there is no poor law, and consequently 
no check from that source), more bastards are born there, than any- 
where else in the British Islands. The women in the upper and 
middle classes of Great Britain are chaste; that is true; it is also 



DUTIES OF WOMEN. — CHASTITY. 201 

lution, and certain higher circles, then and now, in 
France, Italy, and Germany. In these societies, 
the political degradation of the men (now partially 
removed, at least in France) operates to the advan- 
tage of the women, by bringing the men down to 
their level. The drawing-room becomes the great 
theatre of action for both ; and the women there, so 
far from inferiority, are in several points superior.* 



true, that their chastity is seldom solicited. They are strictly watch- 
ed and are not easily approached. Their equals among the men find 
more accessible, perhaps more inviting, objects of desire among the 
women of the lower class. If enjoying the same opportunities, and 
exposed to the same temptations, would they make a stronger resist- 



ance 



? 



* A state of society similar in many respects to that of the saloons 
of Paris, which is of very modern origin, seems to have existed in 
the times of the Troubadours in the South of France, before that 
beautiful country felt the scourge of Simon de Montfort's crusade, 
from the effects of which it never wholly recovered. I have been 
inclined to suspect that the gallantry towards women, which formed 
so remarkable a part of chivalrous manners, and has thence been 
transferred into the forensic morality of Europe, had its origin in Pro- 
vencal drawing-rooms, became vocal in the poetry of the Trouba- 
dours, was thence borrowed by the authors of the metrical romances, 
and thus, and through the prose romances, became gradually intro- 
duced into the upper social life of Europe. It always existed in a 
higher degree in France than elsewhere. Nor does this opinion rest 
wholly upon theoretical grounds ; for the historical investigations of 
the industrious and rational Hallam seem to point to the same con- 
clusion. See his " Literature of Europe," chap. 2, § 90. It is, in- 
deed, constantly repeated that the elevation of women in modern 
times is solely due to the influence of Christianity, — one of those 
numerous fallacies flattering to popular prejudice, which pass cur- 
rent without examination. St. Paul is most explicit and oriental, 
touching the inferiority and due subordination of women. Through- 
out the East, where Christianity originated and earliest prevailed, it 
never to this day has done any thing for the sex. They owe their pre- 
sent position, such as it is, in Europe, and European colonies, to the 



202 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



These societies, too, consist entirely or chiefly of a 
class of persons who follow no industrious occupa- 
tion, but live upon an unearned revenue. The wife, 
by her dowry, contributes her share towards uphold- 
ing the establishment ; and by an arrangement bor- 
rowed from the Roman law enjoys a separate and 
independent income. Under these circumstances, 
the married women are encouraged and are able to 
demand, that, as upon other things, so upon the point 
of conjugal fidelity, they shall be admitted to an 
equality with their husbands. They allege, what it 
is impossible to deny, that the restraint of fidelity is 
as hard on them as on the men ; and that so far as 
mere personal suffering is concerned, and independ- 
ent of artificial obliquy, which, being artificial, may 
be as easily done away as created, the misery of a 
faithless husband is even greater than that of an 
unfaithful wife ; and these premises being conceded, 
the demand follows, that either husbands should 
submit to the same restraints imposed upon their 
wives, or that wives should enjoy the same liberty 
as their husbands. 

15. Had marriages, in those communities, been 
unions of choice and affection, it is not to be doubted 
that both parties would have preferred the alterna- 
tive of mutual fidelity. But as marriage, in those 
ranks, was, in general, a mere matter of finance and 
family alliance, neither party found in it any ade- 
quate satisfaction of the sexual desire, which leisure, 



diffusion of Roman manners and Roman law; drawing-room influ- 
ences ; the Romances; and more than all, the advancing intelligence 
and humanity of modern times. 



DUTIES OF WOMEN. — CHASTITY. 203 

constant social intercourse, and all the arts of per- 
sonal grace and adornment, kept always excited ; 
and to the satisfaction of which free choice and un- 
forced preference are so absolutely essential. Unwil- 
ling and unable, therefore, as the men were to sur- 
render that prerogative of liberty which they had so 
long enjoyed, they were gradually induced, partly 
out of policy, partly out of justice, and partly for the 
sake of peace, to concede to their wives a nearly 
equal degree of freedom ; and hence that system, in 
several parts of Europe, and especially in Italy, of 
allowing married women to choose their own lovers ; 
a system which has excited mingled horror and in- 
dignation in the minds of many English moralists, 
who have yet regarded, if not with open indulgence, 
at least with silent disapprobation, a similar liberty on 
the part of the husband, — a liberty, which if not so 
generally exercised among the upper classes of Great 
Britain as elsewhere, is yet too common to be re- 
garded as at all unpardonable. 

This extra-marital commerce of love on the part 
of the married, was always condemned by the ascetic 
moralists, for reasons which will be explained in the 
next chapter ; buf in those countries in which it pre- 
vails, forensically considered, it has lost all its crimi- 
nality, and has acquired, as far at least as opinion 
goes, a perfectly legitimate character. Fidelity has 
there become a duty not to the husband, but to the 
lover ; and hence, in those societies, the existence of 
such connexions, however contrary to our ideas of 
right and wrong, cannot justly be considered as im- 



204 THEORY OF MORALS. 

plying any deficiency of moral sentiment on the 
part of those men and women who enter into them.* 

16. As the above reasons upon which the liberty 
of married women is founded, do not apply to the 
case of the unmarried ; it is to be observed that un- 
married women, in those same societies, are still sub- 
ject to all the old restrictions ; and, indeed, are more 
strictly guarded than elsewhere, lest they might be 
seduced by the example of the liberty allowed to the 
married. 

17. As a counterpart to, and illustration of, the 
preceding observations, we may refer to the opera- 
tion, in a very different state of society, of an ap- 
proach towards equality on the part of the women. 
In the more northerly States of the American Union, 
within the last thirty years, great pains have been 
_\ . 

* These notions of the rights of married women, originated with, 
and were at first limited to, the upper class. But the political revolu- 
tions in France having levelled all ranks, all ranks have claimed, upon 
this point, as upon others, equal privileges, whence has resulted a cu- 
rious confusion of ideas upon several points of morals, and espe- 
cially upon this point of the rights of married women, — a confusion 
of ideas very obvious in all the modern French dramatists and novel- 
ists. Though they often speak as though thoy considered the breach 
of marital fidelity on the part of a woman to be wrong, the general 
current of their ideas sets quite the other way ; nor can any thing 
different be expected, so long as marriages in France are made, not 
by the parties themselves, but by their relations. We may observe, 
however, that the same inconsistences of opinion on the duties of the 
marriage relation so obvious in recent French literature, pervades, also, 
the literature of the last half of the eighteenth century. Those free 
notions above sketched never obtained exclusive currency, even in 
the saloons of Paris. Even there they still encountered the lingering 
fragments of older opinions ; and in this case, as in others, expres- 
sions remained the same, long after opinions and practice had altered. 



DUTIES OF WOMEN. — CHASTITY. 205 

taken with female education ; and in point of intel- 
ligence and general information, the women, on the 
average, have been raised nearly, or quite, to a level 
with the men. Many of the promoters of this scheme 
of female education are puzzled and alarmed to find, 
that this elevation of women has produced its nat- 
ural effect ; and that, no longer satisfied with that 
total absorption in their obtained or expected hus- 
bands which constitutes the Anglo-Saxon idea of 
female duty, they are beginning to put forward sev- 
eral embarrassing claims to a greater social equality. 
Among other matters the attention of some of 
them has been strongly attracted to the unequal 
yoke, as respects the matter of chastity, imposed 
upon men and women by current forensic morals ; 
and they have formed certain societies, called " So- 
cieties for Moral Reform," for the purpose of vindi- 
cating the Rights of Women upon this point. The 
founders of these societies have all been educated 
in the mystic-ascetic code to be expounded in the 
next chapter, and besides, are themselves much un- 
der the influence of the very opinions of which 
they complain. Hence they would start back with 
horror and indignation, from the idea of claiming 
or accepting the liberty which men enjoy. But, 
rejecting that alternative, they insist upon the other. 
They demand that men should be subjected to the 
same restraints with themselves ; that all male de- 
partures from chastity should be visited by obloquy ; 
and that, in defect of such obloquy inflicted by pub- 
lic opinion, punishment for seduction should find a 
place in the laws. 

18 



206 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



That forensic moralists and especially that legisla- 
tors should raise some objections to these demands 
is not surprising ; but the violent opposition, the 
reproaches and ridicule which these societies have 
encountered at the hands even of reverend professors 
of ascetic-mystic morals, is one among innumerable 
instances of the coolness with which men reject the 
most legitimate deductions from their own premises, 
whenever those conclusions run counter to their hab- 
its or their inclinations. 



CHAPTER VI. 



\ 



ASCETIC SYSTEMS OF MORALS. 



1. A host of moralists forensic and mystic, from 
Lycurgus, Pythagoras, and Cato the Censor, through 
St. Austin, Calvin, Wesley, and Whitefield, down to 
the journalists and preachers of the present day, with 
an intervening line of the most heterogeneous de- 
scription, including almost all the disciples of the 
self-sacrificing school, have united in the condemna- 
tion of Luxury, or what they have sometimes called 
Self-indulgence, as utterly hostile to all good morals. 

By luxury, has been intended the pursuit of pleas- 
ures not commonly indulged in ; and the condemners 
of luxury may be arranged into the three classes 
of Political, Philosophical, and Mystical Ascetics. 

2. In the times of the ancient Greek republics, 
when war was the chief occupation of the free citi- 



ASCETIC SYSTEMS OF MORALS. 207 

zens, and when each community was at all times 
liable to be attacked on all sides, and, if defeated, to 
be plundered and ruined and to have all its citizens 
sold into slavery ; in those times, when courage and 
hardihood were considered the most beneficial, and, 
therefore, the most estimable of qualities, every thing 
that tended to soften and refine manners, and to ren- 
der the citizens less warlike, that is to say, every 
thing that tended to advance civilization, was con- 
demned, under the name of luxury, as ruinous to the 
community, and, therefore, immoral and criminal. 

In the latter days of the Roman Republic, when 
the vast conquests of that warlike community had 
converted the Senators and the Equestrian order into 
an oligarchy of potentates vying with kings and 
with each other in wealth and magnificence, and 
struggling with each other for the possession of pow- 
er, while the great mass of the citizens had become 
mere mercenary soldiers ; that prodigality of expense, 
that splendid profusion, which was the natural result 
of this state of things, was exclaimed against by 
poets, orators, and historians, as having been its 
cause. 

3. This condemnation of luxury thus commenced 
by warlike barbarians, or by those who celebrated 
the praises, and lamented the passing away, of an 
age of warlike barbarism, — was taken up, and push- 
ed still further by two very different schools of mor- 
alists. 

The first of these schools was that of the cynical 
Stoics, of whom Diogenes and Epictetus may be 
taken as specimens. They perceived that the pur- 



I 

HP 



208 THEORY OF MORALS. 






suit of pleasures for ourselves often leads us to disre- 
gard the pleasures of others ; and they hoped to rem- 
edy that evil by forbidding the pursuit of pleasures ; 
a plausible but superficial and false idea, which 
has at all times served to give to ascetic moral codes 
a certain degree of popularity. This idea leads at 
once to rigor and severity towards others as well as 
towards ourselves ; for, if pleasures be wrong in us, 
they are not less wrong in others. 

Hence that contempt for the vulgar delights and 
ordinary pleasures of men, and presently that con- 
tempt for mankind, which the Stoic philosophy in- 
culcated. Carried out, it relapsed into a system of 
mere selfishness. The Stoic philosopher, teres et ro- 
tundus, wholly wrapped up in himself, cut himself 
off from all sympathy with mankind, and even lost 
all disposition to exert himself in their behalf. 

Indeed, a certain incapacity of sympathizing with 
the pleasures and desires of others, an insensibility to 
what are stigmatized as sensual pleasures either con- 
stitutional, or oftener brought on by the satiety of 
excessive indulgence, as in the case of the Jew- 
ish moralist, Solomon, and the Christian moralist, 
St. Austin, or else an incapacity of indulging in 
such pleasures through sickness, poverty, or social 
position, giving rise to a feeling of envy against 
those who are more fortunate ; one or the other of 
these circumstances, or all of them, joined to a strong 
desire of superiority which discovers no other so 
easy means of gratification as in declamations against 
the luxury and depravity of the times, will be 
found, on a close scrutiny, to lie at the bottom of a 
great deal of ascetic morality. 



ASCETIC SYSTEMS OF MORALS. 209 

4. But they who are more especially known as 
ascetics, from whose penitential exercises the name 
is derived, are those who, under the stigma of sen- 
sual, carnal, and worldly delights, have condemn- 
ed the pleasures of the table, of the sexual sentiment, 
of music, of poetry, of the contemplation of the 
beautiful, of the perception of the ludicrous, of the 
exercise of reason, of the pursuit of knowledge, of 
wealth, of power, of glory, — indeed, almost all the 
pleasures of which men are capable, — as the sinful 
desires of a depraved nature ; who have even gone the 
length of recommending the voluntary infliction of 
pains and degradations, fastings, hair shirts, scourg- 
ings, the most exquisite bodily torments, constant 
self-denial and perpetual humiliation, even death 
itself. This school of ascetics, of which Christian, 
Mahomedan, Boodhist, Hindu, and Pagan branches 
are to be found, proceeds, theoretically, upon mystic 
views. 

5. In the preceding part of this treatise, we have 
shown how that school of theologians commonly 
distinguished as Theosophists, arrived at the conclu- 
sion, that the reason why the love of God is not, 
as according to their theory it ought to be, the lead- 
ing motive of human conduct, is, the selfishness and 
practical atheism of mankind, — men's thoughts 
being constantly drawn off from God by sensible 
objects and wordly pleasures. 

This opinion is closely connected with, and serves 
to strengthen and support, another dogma of this 
school, the dogma, namely, that human nature con- 
sists of two parts, totally distinct and dissimilar, to 
18* 



/" 






210 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



wit, a material mortal body, and a spiritual, immortal, 
godlike soul. A somewhat arbitrary division of the 
faculties of human nature is made between these 
two alleged component parts of it ; and, while intel- 
ligence or the power of perceiving is ascribed to 
the soul, sensibility or the power of feeling — at 
least so far as respects the greater number of pleas- 
ures and pains — is supposed to be a function of the 
body.* 

Putting these two doctrines together, one great 
branch of the Theosophists held, that man's great 
object ought to be, and duty is, to free the soul as 
much as possible from the dominion of the body. 
Thus freed, the soul will be necessarily attracted 
towards God, the proper object of its admiring love ; 
and we shall then perpetually pay to the Deity that 
tribute of constant adoration, the only possible duty 
of a finite towards an infinite being ; external acts of 
worship being of importance only as serving to fix 
the thoughts on God ; therefore, the height of vir- 
tue is, to rise above all ordinary perceptions, feel- 
ings, and pursuits ; and to keep the soul steadfast in 
unceasing admiration of God's infinite perfections. 

That complete insensibility to the material world 
and to all the ordinary pleasures and pains of life 
which this state implies, naturally led the Boodhist 
doctors to the idea of nieban, or annihilation, as the 



* We have already adverted to the confusion of ideas produced by 
this attempt to separate perception and sensibility, two things so inti- 
mately connected, that, as far as human experience goes, they cannot 
exist separately. But this is a topic of which the further considera- 
tion appertains to the Theory of Knowledge. 



ASCETIC SYSTEMS OF MORALS. 211 

height of excellence and happiness. Others, to ex- 
press the same idea, have used the phrase, " absorp- 
tion into God." 

But as the ordinary pleasures and pains of life, or 
what the ascetics denominate carnal pleasures and 
pains, tend constantly to draw us off from this state of 
holy contemplation ; therefore, it is necessary to 
mortify the body, and all the carnal appetites along 
with it. Some partisans of this school, such as Ori- 
gen, in pursuance of this idea, have proceeded to the 
length of mutilating themselves. Others have gone 
still further ; and in more religions than one, this 
notion pushed to its ultimate extreme, has led to the 
doctrine and the practice of religious suicide. 

6. It is these opinions, carried out to a greater or 
less extent, which have produced, not in Christen- 
dom alone, but in almost every part of the world, 
recluses, hermits, religious mendicants, self-torment- 
ing saints, monks, nuns, and devotees ; professions 
in which most commonly we may discover a strange 
mixture of self-deception and hypocrisy ; but which 
often repay those who adopt them for all the priva- 
tions and voluntary sufferings to which they subject 
themselves, not only by beatific visions of fancy 
which become more lively as sensible objects are 
shut out, but, also, by the more obvious advantages 
of popular admiration and a reputation of sanctity, 
whereby many a holy saint has enabled himself to 
taste the worldly delights of fame and power. 

7. Not only do mystic dogmas and the sentiment 
of self-comparison serve to buttress up these ascetic 
notions ; they are partially sustained by other con- 



212 THEORY OF MORALS. 

siderations. He who asks no pleasures for himself, 
is thought likely to be most willing to bestow pleas- 
ures upon others, — a false, but plausible conclusion. 
Hence, that strong tendency to an alliance between 
the self-sacrificing theory of morals and ascetic prac- 
tices and ideas. These systems agree in requiring 
the subjection or rather the extinguishment, of the 
greater part of the sentiments natural to man. 

8. Of all the pleasures stigmatized under the name 
of carnal and sensual, none have come in for so full a 
share of ascetic-mystic condemnation as the pleasures 
of the sexual sentiment ; which, under the odious 
name of lust, has been pursued with endless denun- 
ciations. The reason is obvious. Not only is the 
gratification of this sentiment in its natural combi- 
nation with others, the source of great pleasures ; it 
is also the foundation of conjugal and parental rela- 
tions. It leads men to impose upon themselves in 
addition to their own support, the greater care of 
providing for the support of their consorts and their 
children. Men thus become connected with the 
world by numerous ties ; and they are proportion- 
ably drawn off from that state of abstracted medita- 
tion, from that total absorption in the contemplation 
of the Deity, in which, according to the ascetic mys- 
tics, godliness ox piety consists.* 

* Piety, in the original Latin, is filial devotion, a sentiment into 
which, according to Roman ideas, there entered more of admiration, 
and even of fear, than of love ; — for the Roman father had the 
power of life and death over his children. This word was used by the 
ascetic mystics, to designate that total submissiveness to the Divine 
will and that perpetual contemplation and adoration of the Divine 
attributes, in which, according to their theory, the only possible hu- 
man goodness consists. 



ASCETIC SYSTEMS OF MORALS. 213 

Hence, the eulogies bestowed upon chastity, by 
which was meant not only entire abstinence from 
sexual indulgences but the total suppression of that 
sentiment. Hence, the high merit ascribed by the 
Christian fathers to virginity ; hence, marriage itself 
was condemned, as sinful ; absolutely prohibited to 
the clergy, and to those who made any high pre- 
tensions to piety; and if allowed to the common 
people, allowed simply as a means of propagating 
the species ; any indulgence in the pleasures of the 
marriage bed, for the mere sake of those pleasures, 
being denounced as beastly, carnal, and corrupt.* 
Though marriage among the laity was determined 
to be lawful, the mystic ascetics still struggled hard 
against permitting second marriages ; and it is chief- 
ly owing to their doctrines and influence, that, 
throughout Christendom, marriage has been held so 
strictly indissoluble, however much both parties 
might desire a separation. Men and women who 
would marry, and who could not agree, were thought 
entitled to no pity, but justly punished for yielding 
to their carnal desires by the miseries of an unsuita- 
ble and unhappy union. 

* " nor turned I ween 

Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rights 

Mysterious of connubial love refused, 

Whatever hypocrites austerely talk 

Of purity, and place, and innocence , 

Defaming as impure what God declares 

Pure" &c. Paradise Lost, Book IV. 1. 741. 

This passage alludes to those mystic commentators who had taught, 
that, so long as Adam and Eve remained in Paradise, the idea of sex- 
ual intercourse never entered their heads. See Bayle's Diet. Art. 
Adam. 









214 THEORY OF MORALS. 

9. Enraptured by the pleasures of the sexual 
sentiment, and finding them naturally associated 
with, and only to be enjoyed in their highest per- 
fection when associated with, a high and empas- 
sioned degree of benevolence and of sensibility to 
the beautiful ; observing, too, that the strict regula- 
tions of indissoluble marriage are destructive of that 
freedom so essential to love, without which, sexual 
intercourse loses the greater part of its attractions ; 
and that such restraints, sustained by law, make the 
parties the property of each other, and tend to trans- 
form them from mutual lovers, into obligated prosti- 
tutes,* the poets have undertaken, against the ascetics 
of whatever school, the defence of love, and of its 
free indulgence, stt least so far as the men are con- 
cerned. It is they who have been the great champi- 
ons of those forensic ideas, expounded in the preced- 
ing chapter, and, in general, the ardent opposers of 
the whole mystic-ascetic system. The modern dra- 
matic poets especially have taken a very active part 
in this warfare ; which sufficiently explains the horror 
with which ascetic moralists regard the modern 
Drama, and the hatred with which they pursue it. 

10. It must be confessed, however, that, as re- 
spects the duty of chastity, the mystic-ascetic 
system, in point of equity, far surpasses the forensic 
codes. The view of chastity taken by the ascetic 



1 How oft when pressed to marriage have I said, 
Curse on all Jaws but those which Love has made. 
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties, 
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies," &c, &c. 

Pope's Eloisa and Abelard. 



DUTIES OF PRIVATE RELATIONS. 215 

mystics, has not allowed them to make any distinc- 
tion between women and men. What they call lust, 
under which name they denounce every emotion of 
sexual desire, is as criminal in the one as in the 
other. Hence, among several other reasons already 
indicated, women, in general, have been led to re- 
gard with favor the mystic-ascetic code. Even the 
doctrine of that code with respect to divorces has 
been esteemed a boon by them. Sensible of the in- 
justice with which they have ever been treated, they 
have regarded the system of indissoluble marriage 
as at least a partial security against the caprices of 
the men, giving them, in fact, a sort of property in 
their husbands ; and they have reasonably dreaded, 
lest freedom of separation, if allowed, would be al- 
lowed as it hitherto always has been, only upon 
terms, which would assign all its advantages to the 
men, and all its evils to themselves. 



CHAPTER VII. 

MUTUAL DUTIES OF RELATIVES, FRIENDS, INFERIORS, 
SUPERIORS, ENEMIES, AND STRANGERS. 

1. We have had occasion already, in the first part 
of this treatise, to explain what no theory of morals 
heretofore propounded even attempts to explain, 
why, in all forensic codes of morals, so many duties 
are required towards children, parents, near relations, 



216 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



and intimate friends, beyond those required towards 
mere acquaintances or entire strangers. It does not 
seem necessary to add any thing here to what we have 
already said respecting the mutual duties of parents 
and children, and the rules according to which those 
duties are determined.* The practice of infanticide, 
allowed in so many communities, though a seeming, 
we have shown not to be a real, violation of those 
rules ; since it has never been morally justified ex- 
cept as a means of escaping greater evils to the child, 
as well as to the parents ; and the same may be said 
of a custom known to prevail in some savage tribes, 
which allows the children, under certain circum- 
stances, to terminate the existence of their old and 
helpless parents. 

The peculiar degree of power allowed to the 
father, and of veneration and service required from 
the child, as formerly among the Romans, and at 
present among the Chinese, ought rather to be 
looked upon as a political institution, and, as such, 
will be considered in the Theory of Politics. 

2. The bond of relationship is observed to be of 
much less apparent strength and extent in civilized, 
than in barbarous communities. This appearance 
is owing not so much to any decrease in civilized 
communities of the force of the sentiment of be- 
nevolence towards relatives, as to its increase towards 
neighbours and fellow-men in general ; whence, less 
distinction comes to be made on the mere ground of 
relationship. 



* See Part I. Ch. 2, § 21 and 38. 



DUTIES OF PRIVATE RELATIONS. 217 

3. The same observation applies also to all those 
limited forms of good will in which benevolence is 
restricted to a class, a caste, or a particular commu- 
nity or nation. It necessarily follows, that, as be- 
nevolence becomes more diffused, it is apt to be less 
concentrated. Bacon, in his Essays, observes, that 
" the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, 
have proceeded from the unmarried or childless 
men ; which, both in affections and means, have 
married and endowed the public." Hence, too, we 
may understand why men whose philanthropy was 
unquestionable, have not always been models in the 
private relations of life. Rousseau sent his children 
to a foundling hospital and publicly justified the 
act ; envious rumor has accused even the illustrious 
Howard of hard-heartedness towards his son ; Ben- 
tham seems, sometimes, to have acted very strangely 
towards his friends. 

4. The duties of Friendship have formed a favor- 
ite topic, especially with the ancient moralists. In 
modern times, as women have gradually risen towards 
equality, friendship and love have been more and 
more conjoined ; and intimate friendships between 
men to which so many obstacles are opposed, and 
which are so liable to disruption, have been less cul- 
tivated. 

The high standard of the duties of friendship, 
the strict obligation by which friends are thought to 
be bound to each other, depends upon the same con- 
siderations which regulate the duties of love. A 
man does not choose his parents, his children, his 
brothers, or his sisters ; and family affection fre- 
19 



218 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



quently encounters the obstacle of very disagreeable 
qualities and even very injurious conduct on the 
part of our relations. But our friends we do choose ; 
and we choose them precisely for the reason that 
they are specially agreeable to us ; that we find a 
pleasure in their society. This pleasure tends to 
increase as towards them the average force of our 
benevolence ; and of course, to raise as towards them 
the standard of moral obligation. 

The disposition to friendship enjoys a higher de- 
gree of moral approbation than the disposition to 
love. The sentiment of self-comparison is very apt 
to run counter to friendship ; the powerful stimulus 
of sexual desire is absent ; and hence the capacity for 
friendship is thought to require a greater degree of 
benevolence. Besides, it is a more expansive senti- 
ment. A man may have several friends, and friends 
in several degrees ; he is supposed able to love but 
one woman. 

5. For the same reason, violations of the duties of 
friendship are regarded with sterner condemnation, 
than breaches of the duties of love. The sexual 
sentiment which enters so considerably into the 
latter passion, is in its nature so capricious, and 
through satiety or disappointment is apt so suddenly 
to change its object, that according to the poets, 
Jupiter laughs at the breach of lovers' vows; and 
though often esteemed by, the suffering party, the 
deepest and most irremediable of injuries, and as 
such allowed great weight when regarded in the 
light of provocation, violations of the duty of a 
lover taken by themselves, and unattended by ag- 



DUTIES OF PRIVATE RELATIONS. 219 

gravating circumstances, though liable to a certain 
degree of censure, can hardly be said to have any 
permanent influence upon the current estimate of a 
person's moral character. The contemplation of the 
mutual happiness of lovers, except in very benevo- 
lent hearts, always excites a certain degree of envy. 
It is dread of this envy, at least in part, which makes 
lovers so coy before third persons, and so impatient 
of their presence. It is this, quite as much as any 
thing really ridiculous in their words or conduct, 
which makes the endearments of lovers such favorite 
subjects of ridicule. This is the reason why, if a 
girl is suspected of having a lover, all her female 
acquaintance at once set to work to tease and tor- 
ment her. This is the chief reason why women 
and men are so fond of ferreting out all sorts of love 
scandals. Vulcan, say the Greek mythologists, having 
discovered the amours of Venus and Mars, cunningly 
spread for them an invisible net of steel, caught in 
which he exposed them naked to the gaze and de- 
rision of the other Gods. Vulcan, as an injured 
husband, — though what business had he with Ve- 
nus for a wife ? — had reason for his conduct ; but 
men and women, in general, with no other motive 
than pure envy would delight to see all happy lovers 
served much in the same way. Hence, whenever 
we witness the interruption of a commerce of love, 
the pleasure of triumphing over a person who had 
the audacity to be happier than we, makes us so in- 
sensible to the pain of the abandoned lover, that we 
are generally more disposed to laugh at him than to 
sympathize with him. Breaches of friendship are 
regarded in a much more serious light. 



220 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



6. We have shown in the First Part, how the sen- 
timent of admiration tends to reenforce the senti- 
ment of benevolence, and hence to establish towards 
persons who have any thing admirable about them, 
a higher standard of duty, than towards ordinary 
persons. This is the foundation of the duty of infe- 
riors towards superiors. 

7. The respect and reverence required from the 
young towards the old, is always greatest in those 
primitive communities, as among the savage tribes 
of Africa and America, in which the experience 
of age is the chief source of knowledge. It dimin- 
ishes and even entirely disappears in those more 
civilized states of society, in which education and 
books supply, and more than supply, the acquisitions 
of age and observation. 

8. The devotion of subjects towards kings, of the 
laity towards the clergy, of the commons towards 
the nobles, of the poor towards the rich, is always 
regulated, both in theory and practice, by the degree 
in which actual superiority on the part of kings, 
priests, the noble, and the rich, is generally felt, and 
acknowledged. For when the distance between 
ourselves and those above us is reduced or appears 
to us to be reduced, within a certain limit, self-com- 
parison springs up, counteracts admiration, expels it, 
replaces it by envy, and changes what lately were 
objects of love, into objects of hate. Those who 
complain of the growing insolence of their inferiors, 
if they look carefully into the matter, will always 
find, that either they are falling, or those below 
them, rising ; or that both these operations are 



DUTIES OF PRIVATE RELATIONS. 22 I 

simultaneously going on ; so that the superiority 
which alone can support their claims to respect, no 
longer exists ; or at least not to the extent which 
they suppose. 

9. Chivalrous gallantry towards women depends 
upon the same cause. It springs from admiration ; 
it is, as we have elsewhere shown, an acknowledg- 
ment of woman's superiority in the drawing-room, — 
an acknowledgment not incompatible with the idea 
of her inferiority everywhere else. By the rules of 
chivalry, this gallant devotion was due to the fair, 
the elegant, the accomplished, the noble, that is, to 
those women fit to be admired ; it extended not to 
the ugly, the vulgar, and the old. Housemaids and 
peasants' wives were no objects of it. If modern 
courtesy has anywhere given to this sentiment a great- 
er extension, it has proceeded upon the notion of 
honoring in each individual woman the beau ideal 
of woman ; in the same way, that, in speaking of the 
" fair sex," we ascribe to all women that which in 
fact appertains but to a few. 

10. Correlative to the duties of inferiors towards 
superior are the duties of superiors towards inferiors. 
Hence the duties of chieftains towards their clans- 
men, of patrons towards their clients, of the clergy 
to the laity, of kings towards their subjects, of mas- 
ters towards their scholars, of the rich towards the 
poor. The duty of chieftains and leaders requires, in 
return for adhesion and obedience, not only protec- 
tion and countenance, but, where the chieftainship is 
lucrative, the distribution among the followers of 

19* 



222 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



almost its entire revenue. According to old Irish, 
Scotch, and Saxon ideas, the landlord was rather lord 
as respected the distribution among his tenants of 
proceeds of the domain, as to which he was allow- 
ed a very arbitrary authority, than lord in any such 
sense, that he could engross the whole to his own 
private use. It is absurd for modern British land- 
lords, who let their lands at a rack-rent, to complain 
of the decay among the people, of old ideas of feu- 
dal reverence and attachment. They cannot have 
love and money too. Indeed, it remains to be seen, 
how long, after having forfeited and forgone the love, 
they will be able to keep the money. 

11. It is well worthy the consideration of states- 
men, that in all systems of positive law, the un- 
limited right to the disposal of property has been 
carried much beyond the point hitherto attained 
upon that subject in any current moral code. The 
law says that a man may do what he pleases with 
his own ; all codes of morals have vigorously insisted 
upon Munificence and Charity as imperative duties. 
It has been attempted to distinguish these duties 
from those of justice, under which head respect for 
the rights of property is included, by describing 
them as duties of imperfect obligation. In fact, how- 
ever, they rest, like all other duties, upon precisely 
the same grounds with duties of justice, and the 
two classes, those said to be of perfect, and those of 
imperfect, obligation pass imperceptibly into each 
other. 

12. Munificence, otherwise called Liberality, is a 
duty of the rich, who are expected to dispense in 






DUTIES OF PRIVATE RELATIONS. 223 

feasts and entertainments, or otherwise, the greater 
portion of their wealth. The neglect of this duty, 
subjects them to the stigma of parsimony, meanness, 
avarice. The performance of it implies but a 
very small degree of benevolence, and its neglect, 
therefore, a very great want of it, — since, in the 
exercise of munificence, the sentiment of benevolence 
is strongly reinforced by the sentiment of self-com- 
parison. The complacency a man naturally feels 
when presiding at a feast, and distributing his favors 
among many, perhaps, far his superiors, will account 
for numerous acts of liberality and munificence on 
the part of men of very limited benevolence. Such 
acts, too, are very sure never to lack the due tribute 
of praise. All those who gain by them, or who hope 
to gain hereafter by similar acts, join in extolling 
them. A contribution of ten pounds by a queen or 
a minister is recorded in all the newspapers, while 
the widow's mite drops unheeded. The managers 
of our charitable societies have well understood this 
part of human nature ; and by the ingenious scheme 
of lists of donations periodically published they have 
contrived to stimulate even the widow's benevo- 
lence, by the prospect of fame and praise. 

13. Charity is a duty of far greater scope. It is 
incumbent, not upon the rich only, but, to a greater 
or less extent, upon all who have any thing to give. 
It consists in bestowing a part of what we have to 
relieve those who have less, and who are suffering 
from want. The sentiment of benevolence when 
thus excited, is called Pity. Pity, it has been ob- 
served, if on the one hand it be the sister of love, on 



224 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



the other, is closely allied to contempt. Objects of 
pity inflict upon us not only a pain of benevolence, 
but also a pain of disappointment. .They fall below 
our expectations, and present us with a scene of 
weakness and suffering which we 'did not anticipate. 
From the very fact that these humiliated sufferers 
are men, especially if they are countrymen, neigh- 
bours, or relations, their misery and degradation cast 
a shadow upon us. It is for these reasons, that so 
many people have such a dread of visiting scenes of 
want and distress; and it is for these reasons that 
benevolence is so often extinguished by disgust and 
contempt. If, however, we overcome these feelings, 
and attempt the relief of the sufferers, just in pro- 
portion as we are successful, they are apt to become 
%\ie objects of our affection. The love of superiori- 
ty is gratified at the same time with the sentiment 
of benevolence. Here is something that we have 
done. Here is a good work achieved by ourselves. 
Those whom we have rescued from the depths of 
misery and degradation, and raised almost or quite 
to a level with ourselves, stand to us almost in the 
relation of children. Should they happen, however, 
to rise above us, unless they rise far above, jeal- 
ousy and envy spring up, and we shall be likely to 
begin to love them less. 

14. Pity, as we have said, is the sentiment with 
which we regard the sufferings of those inferior to 
us. In the case where those who suffer are our 
equals or our superiors, the sentiment of benevo- 
lence so excited, is denominated Sympathy. This 
latter is a motive of action much more powerful 



DUTIES OF PRIVATE RELATIONS. 225 

than pity. Thus it happens that, in all countries, 
the necessities of the poor are relieved to a much 
greater extent by the sympathy of those almost as 
poor as themselves, than by the charity of the rich. 
Reinforced by admiration, sympathy reaches its 
highest pitch. Hence, the feeling excited by the 
reverses of princes,; hence, for instance, the lamenta- 
tions over Bonaparte banished to St. Helena, often 
poured out by men not very accessible to the dis- 
tresses of their neighbours, and especially of their 
poorer neighbours. But the operation of sympathy 
will be more fully considered in the next chapter. 

15. It has been observed that women are every- 
where much more prompt and zealous than man, in 
administering to the necessities of poverty and sick- 
ness. Women naturally have the desire of superior- 
ity as strongly as men ; but they have much fewer 
opportunities of gratifying it, and must make the 
most of such as they have. Hence, in part at least, 
their greater fondness for children, and their greater 
readiness to undertake works of charity. To be- 
stow favors, implies superiority. 

16. Many systems of mysticism, as the Christian, 
the Mahometan, and the Boodhist, have greatly rec- 
ommended themselves to the mass of the people, 
who have always been poor, by a zealous inculca- 
tion of the duty of alms-giving, — a duty, however, 
which, according to the best informed modern 
moralists, requires to be exercised with much dis- 
crimination ; the grand object being, to enable the 
poor to provide for themselves. 

17. All systems of morality agree tolerably well 



226 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



as to our duties towards our neighbours ; but as re- 
spects our duty towards our enemies, those who 
have inflicted or whom we suppose to have inflicted, 
injuries upon us, and who are naturally objects of 
our hatred, there is a most marked distinction be- 
tween all forensic, we may say, indeed, all practised 
codes, and those speculative codes which have made 
pure benevolence, or the doctrine of self-sacrifice, 
the sole foundation of morals. These codes pro- 
claim the singular paradox, that it is our duty to 
love our enemies, — a paradox so repugnant to 
the nature of man, that, of the number who have 
preached this doctrine, it may well be doubted, 
whether one ever practised it. Those, indeed, 
whom we love, we never call our enemies, no mat- 
ter what injuries they may have inflicted upon us. 
To call them so, is an abuse of words. 

This doctrine, then, correctly expressed, amounts 
to this ; that we should have no enemies ; that we 
ought to entertain a sentiment of equal benevolence, 
for everybody. This may be possible for those sol- 
itary recluses who come into contact with nobody ; 
but would imply a most uncommon want of sensi- 
bility in any one engaged in the active duties of life, 
and brought into daily collision with the selfishness 
of others. 

But we may forgive our enemies ; — and a knowl- 
edge of the necessary laws of human action must 
strongly incline every benevolent man to do so. In 
proportion as those laws have become better under- 
stood, the virtue of forgiveness has been better ap- 
preciated ; men have grown less vindictive, and have 






DUTIES OF PRIVATE RELATIONS. 227 

been more and more disposed to regard the conduct 
of each other with a certain degree of indulgence. 
It comes to be perceived that actions injurious to us, 
or actions which we disapprove, do not spring from 
that pure malice and depravity, to which hasty judg- 
ment warped and colored by present pain, so gen- 
erally ascribes them, but from an intricate mixture of 
motives, among which benevolence itself often 
plays a conspicuous part ; or from a view of facts 
and consequences, which, though different from ours, 
is equally plausible, perhaps equally just. 

This great virtue of forgiveness, — for, as yet, it 
is not so commonly practised, as to have obtained 
the character of a duty, — in its more extended 
sense, and considered as applicable not merely to con- 
duct personally injurious to us, but to human actions 
in general, is called Candor, or Charity. The great- 
est obstacle to its practice, next to that false view of 
the origin of human actions above pointed out, is 
the sentiment of self-comparison, producing, in the 
case of injuries personal to ourselves, an apprehen- 
sion lest we may be supposed to have pretermitted 
revenge, more from weakness than good will ; and 
in the more general case of injuries to others, a 
fear lest we subject ourselves to suspicion of want 
of sympathy for the sufferers. 

18. The right of independent communities to 
make war upon each other, has been based, and well 
based, by writers upon international law, upon the 
same grounds upon which rests the right of individ- 
uals, in those communities in which no laws exist, 
to punish wrongs inflicted on themselves. The ex- 



228 



THEORY OF MORALS. 



ercise of this latter right leads to such multiplied 
evils, that the suppression of it by means of laws 
and established government, is thought to be more 
than a counterbalance to all the evils which laws 
and government often inflict. The prevention of 
wars is a thing not less to be desired ; and if not 
otherwise attainable, worthy to be purchased, as the 
suppression of private revenge commonly is, at the 
expense of many lesser dangers and evils. With 
the increasing force of the sentiment of benevolence, 
and a clearer perception of the true means of human 
happiness, philanthropists and even statesmen have 
of late turned their thoughts to the grand idea of a 
universal perpetual peace. In the existing state of 
inequality as well among communities as individu- 
als, this idea, for reasons which will appear in the 
Theory of Politics, cannot yet be realized. At some 
future day, it may be ; and, notwithstanding all the 
ridicule cast upon " peace societies," and the extrav- 
agant deductions founded upon their principles by 
reasoners of the self-sacrificing school, the time per- 
haps will come, when their founder will be more 
celebrated and more illustrious than the ablest and 
most fortunate of the French marshals. War, how- 
ever, affords such scope to the sentiments of self- 
comparison and of admiration, that it has, and long 
will have, many ardent admirers. The poets have 
shed around it a halo of glory, which, as yet, only 
begins to fade. 

19. The ancient Greeks stigmatized all nations 
but themselves, as barbarians ; the Chinese do the 
same now ; and the most enlightened of modern 



DUTIES OF PRIVATE RELATIONS. 229 

communities, though they do not express it so 
strongly, are yet a good deal impressed with a simi- 
lar idea. Yet here too there are marked evidences 
of increasing humanity ; for it begins to triumph, 
not over the narrow prejudices of nationality alone, 
but also over the fierce bigotry of religious hate. 
The sentiments with which the British and Irish 
mutually regard each other, are sufficiently bitter ; 
and, under an exterior respect, we may observe in 
the estimate of each other, mutually formed by the 
French and English, a good deal of suspicion, ha- 
tred, and contempt. Yet these feelings, in both 
cases, have greatly softened within the last fift^r 
years, though half of them, or more, have been 
years of turbulence, rebellion, and war; arid there 
is a considerable and increasing number of individ- 
uals, in all these communities, who are quite un- 
influenced by any national prejudice. 

20. Piracy, if carried on only against strangers, 
was esteemed by the ancient Greeks a permissi- 
ble, and even a praiseworthy means of earning a 
livelihood ; the modern Arabs hold the same opinion 
as to the robbery of caravans. Nobody need be 
much astonished at these opinions, who recollects 
how lately the African slave-trade — a system of 
plunder infinitely more atrocious — was sustained 
by the almost unanimous voice of the moralists and 
legislators of Christendom. But the extended and 
extending intercommunication of modern times, is 
fast making all men neighbours ; and the word, stran- 
ger, in its more general sense, is growing obsolete. 

21. Although stranger has so often and so gen- 

20 












230 THEORY OF MORALS. 



I ■ 

erally been little more than another term for enemy, 
yet, in all states of society, where a stranger pre- 
sented himself under such circumstances as to ex- 
cite neither envy nor cupidity, and to give no oc- 
casion for pains of fear, the sentiment of benevolence 
has ever prompted to treat him kindly. If that 
stranger came singly, unarmed, and apparently in 
want of assistance ; or if, from his manners, dress, 
complexion, or language, he evidently did not belong 
to any of those tribes against which a traditional 
enmity was cherished ; or even if he did belong to 
those tribes, if he was apparently in a state of help- 
lessness and distress, the sentiment of benevolence 
freed from the counteraction of opposing sentiments, 
generally secured him kind treatment ; and, once re- 
ceived and treated kindly, he lost the character of 
stranger, and became a friend. Hence, the duty of 
a host towards his guests, — and especially towards 
those guests whom he has once received into his 
house, and entertained at his table ; a duty, the 
strict performance of which forms so striking a 
feature in the manners of the ancient Greeks, and 
the modern Arabs ; and something similar to which, 
though less elaborated into a system, may be found 
in all communities, savage or civilized. 

In barbarous countries, and the same is true of the 
retired rural districts of civilized countries, in pro- 
portion as the demands made upon hospitality are 
more infrequent, the extent of it, in particular cases, 
is the more striking. In great cities, it is confined 
to those who bring special introductions. If extend- 
ed to all, it would not only prove an intolerable tax, 
but would be attended with many dangers. 



DUTIES! OF SYMPATHY AND OF SELF-RESPECT. 23 1 



CHAPTER VIII. 

DUTIES OF SYMPATHY AND OF SELF-RESPECT. 

1. In treating of the moral classification of actions, 
we found occasion to arrange by themselves those 
very numerous actions, which, while they are bene- 
ficial to some, are, perhaps from that very fact, inju- 
rious to others. It is with respect to this class of 
actions that the greatest discordances of opinion are 
apt to arise. As regards the moral character ascribed 
to these actions, all current moral codes continually 
contradict, not only each other, but themselves. 
The principal cause of these contradictions is to be 
found in those modifications of the sentiment of be- 
nevolence called sympathy r , — a term which includes 
all those emotions compounded out of benevolence 
and some other sentiment or sentiments, which tend 
to render certain individuals, or collections of indi- 
viduals, the special objects of our love. # 

2. Sympathy, that is, the warm attachment of a 
man to a limited number of individuals, his friends, his 
associates, his proteges, his party, his sect, his caste, 
his countrymen, is a quality infinitely more common, 
and far better understood and appreciated, than that 
diffusive benevolence, which, embracing all mankind 
in its purview, does not allow any high degree of 



* For an enumeration of these sentiments, and the laws according 
to which they act, see Part. I. Ch. 2. 












232 THEORY OF MORALS. 



malevolence to be entertained against anybody. 
Sympathy, on the other hand, is not only consistent 
with, on very many occasions it is chiefly displayed 
by, a vigorous exercise of the sentiment of malevo- 
lence. We show our love towards our friends, by 
the vigor with which we hate their enemies. Now 
the exercise of the sentiment of malevolence, like 
the exercise of all our other sentiments, besides its 
direct results, is capable of affording incidentally a 
pleasure belonging to that class denominated in this 
treatise pleasures of activity, — a pleasure, which, 
in some persons, especially those of robust constitu- 
tion, often reaches a high pitch. It is this sort of 
persons, who were described by Dr. Johnson as 
" good haters," and he himself, with all his benevo- 
lence, was one. 

This pleasure, however, cannot long be indulged 
in, without exciting a counteracting pain of benevo- 
lence ; unless, indeed, we can contrive to represent to 
ourselves that the very exercise of the sentiment of 
malevolence, and the actions to which it prompts, 
are benevolent acts, imperiously demanded of us by 
sympathy for our friends, or for those whom, for 
whatever reason, we have adopted as objects of our 
love. Just in proportion, whether in individuals or 
in communities, as the comparative force of the senti- 
ment of benevolence is less, men arrive the easier at 
this conclusion ; and thus it happens, that vast num- 
bers of good haters feeling in themselves a vigorous 
dislike of persons and actions which appear to them 
bad and wrong, and a great pleasure in that dislike, 
set themselves down, at once, as most benevolent 



DUTIES OF SYMPATHY Ax\D OF SELF-RESPECT. 233 

and virtuous men ; for as this dislike is not founded 
upon any evils suffered personally by themselves, 
they justly conclude that it must have its origin in 
sympathy for others who have suffered ; and taking 
its commencement from so respectable and praise- 
worthy a source, they consider the entire compound 
emotion, the hatred as well as the sorrow, equally 
praiseworthy, and that to place any restraint upon it 
would be actually wrong. 

3. This is that virtuous indignation, that cheapest 
and most common kind of virtue so abundant in the 
world, which adds so often to necessary inflictions 
of pain, to reproaches, and to punishments, such as 
even benevolence itself would prompt, a violence 
and ferocity, gratuitous^ and unnecessary pains, sa- 
voring far too much of pure malice. Even the most 
benevolent are exposed to this species of self-decep- 
tion ; even they are apt to conceive, that they can 
adequately express their abhorrence of what they 
regard as evil practices, and their sympathy for those 
who suffer by them, only by heaping all sorts of 
reproaches and injuries upon the guilty actors. 
Hence the fierce spirit of party ; hence the horrible 
cruelties of religious bigotry and religious zeal, per- 
petrated by those, who, in giving free reins to anger 
and hate, fancy themselves solely actuated, all the 
time, by moral considerations of the highest kind. 

4. Here is the source, — the first spring of which 
is the sentiment of benevolence in the shape of 
sympathy, though malevolence soon comes to form 
the main strength of the impulse, — here is the 
source whence have originated almost all those cus- 

20* 



234 THEORY OF MORALS. 



toms, in which cruelty is carried to the highest pitch, 
and men seem turned into devils incarnate. Hence 
the practice among so many savage tribes of mur- 
dering their captured enemies by slow torments, 
even of drinking their blood, and devouring their 
flesh ; hence the custom among the Persians and 
other barbarians, of cutting off the hands and tearing 
out the eyes of prisoners of war; hence those elab- 
orate and ingenious tortures invented by more civil- 
ized nations, as the just punishment of political and 
religious delinquencies. 

5. In the latter case, indeed, the sentiment of self- 
comparison adds its force to the impulse under 
which these cruelties are perpetrated. The man 
who entertains, especially if he attempts to promul- 
gate, political or religious opinions which we con- 
sider wrong, we not only regard as a dangerous en- 
emy to our country and to mankind, we also look 
upon him as one who casts a personal indignity up- 
on us, who has the audacity to say that we are 
wrong ; that upon those points which' perhaps we 
have most studied, we are mistaken and deceived. 
This is a pain of inferiority, to which few men qui- 
etly submit. Hence the promulgators of new opin- 
ions, even upon questions of abstract science, — and 
much more touching those political and religious in- 
stitutions and dogmas upon which all the arrange- 
ments of society rest, or are supposed to rest, and in 
the sustentation of which so many personal interests 
are involved, — have so commonly been the .objects 
of the bitterest persecution, have been denounced as 
disturbers of the public peace, and enemies of the 



DUTIES OF SYMPATHY AND OF SELF-RESPECT. 235 

human race. Here, too, is to be found the reason 
of that observation, that men above forty rarely be- 
come converts to newly broached opinions. Young 
men, who are yet learners, are willing to follow any 
teacher who seems to them to lead towards the 
truth ; old men who esteem themselves teachers, do 
not readily consent to renounce their old opinions, 
or to commence pupils a second time. 

6. Indeed, it is only within the last century that 
the slightest approach has been made in modern 
times, to any thing like freedom of inquiry and dis- 
cussion. Philosophers, within that period, have 
recognized this freedom as an essential means to- 
wards the discovery of the truth. But, though truth 
be professedly everywhere an object of admiration 
and desire, most men mean by it, the opinions al- 
ready adopted by themselves. The great mass of 
men, under the influence of the sentiment of self- 
comparison, and of other motives which will be 
pointed out in the Theory of Education^ adhere ob- 
stinately to errors of which they are themselves the 
victims ; while those best able to discover and to 
promulgate the truth, the men of the greatest abili- 
ties and most learning, too often have not only a 
direct personal interest, but a still stronger interest of 
sympathy, in perpetuating error. In Christendom, 
till very lately, the priesthood and the nobility pos- 
sessed all the science and intelligence of the day, 
and there have been few priests and few nobles 
who have not preferred the interests of their respec- 
tive orders, to the interests of humanity. 

7. Nor from human nature could we reasonably 






236 THEORY OF MORALS. 



expect any thing else. For in all current moral 
codes there is a great class of duties reckoned 
among the most imperative, founded upon sympathy, 
upon the idea that fidelity to friends, to party, to 
sect, to caste, to country, requires of us, among other 
sacrifices, even that of our natural feelings of hu- 
manity towards all those, who, though they have 
done us personally no, harm, are yet for some real or 
imaginary reason, objects of distrust and dislike to 
those who put in a special claim to our sympathy. 
It is these duties of sympathy, which, in current 
moral codes, demand of us, for the benefit or sup- 
posed benefit of our sect, caste, party, or clan, ac- 
tions which, if performed for our own individual 
benefit, would be stigmatized as among the most 
criminal. Hence the doctrine that no faith is to be 
kept with infidels and rebels ; and that a good cause 
is to be promoted by any sort of means ; hence men 
practise even with a strong sentiment of self-appro- 
bation, upon those of a hostile sect, caste, or party, 
from whom individually they have never experi- 
enced the slightest wrong, cruelties, which, if in- 
flicted upon their worst personal enemies, would 
make them regard themselves as monsters of ma- 
levolence ; hence, even the dead have been dug from 
their graves, to be exposed to imagined indignities ; 
hence, men of unquestionable benevolence look not 
only without sorrow, but with the keenest delight, 
upon the most terrible calamities suffered by those 
who are not objects of their sympathy, but which 
are thought conducive to the welfare of others who 
are so. How many such men have justified and re- 



DUTIES OF SYMPATHY AND OF SELF-RESPECT. 237 

joiced in all the atrocities of religious persecution ! 
How many such men have vindicated negro slavery, 
unjust wars, oppressive governments, and a thousand 
other social wrongs, because they esteemed those 
wrongs beneficial to the caste, the nation, the party, 
the order, the religion, or the race for which their 
sympathies were specially engaged ! * 

8. We have shown elsewhere that the mystic 
personal God, both from the character ascribed to 
him, and from the special degree of favor with 
which devout believers always suppose him to re- 
gard them, is calculated to engross their entire affec- 
tions, and to become the sole object of their sympa- 
thy. And according to that law of sympathy above 
explained, just in proportion to the ardor of their 
love for him, — except perhaps with a few of the the- 
osophistic school, — has been the fierceness of their 
hatred towards his supposed enemies ; and their 
disposition to justify, to enjoin, to extol, the most 
horrible severities exercised towards them, as sen- 
sible proofs of love and zeal for him. How could 
they imagine that a Deity himself supposed to in- 
flict interminable torments upon sinners in another 
world, could be otherwise than pleased that those 

* "One of the largest meetings perhaps ever held in Exeter Hall, 
was held on Tuesday evening, convened by the London Missionary 
Society, to consider the means of extending and promoting in China, 
the objects of the Society. Wm. T. Blair, Esq., of Bath, presided. 
Dr. Liefchild moved the first resolution, expressive of thanksgiving to 
God for the war between China and Great Britain, and for the greatly 
enlarged facilities, secured by the treaty of peace for the introduction 
of Christianity into that empire. The resolution was seconded by 
the Rev. Dr. Adler, and was carried unanimously.'* — London Exam- 
iner. January 21, 1843. 



238 THEORY OF MORALS. 

same sinners should be made to commence their 
sufferings here ! 

Hence, the D jehad, or holy war of the Mahome- 
tans, to be perpetually carried on against the infidels 
for the love and glory of God, and represented as 
the most meritorious of acts ; hence, the crusades of 
the Christians, another name for the same thing. 
Hence, the Holy Inquisition, and the autos-da-fe, 
those acts of faith, perpetrated by Protestants as 
well as Catholics, which consist in burning here- 
tics and infidels at the stake. Hence, those ruthless 
persecutions, those wholesale banishments, those 
cruel penal laws, those massacres, assassinations, 
confiscations, dragonnades, that setting of the son 
against the father, of the daughter against the moth- 
er, of the wife against the husband ; those miserable 
mutual hatreds, jealousies, and contentions, by 
which, in times of religious excitement, every city, 
every town, every village, every neighbourhood, 
every family is distracted ; and in which the chief 
actors so often are conscientious men, who, having 
sacrificed their reason, sacrifice their humanity, also, 
to their notions of religious duty. 

If, of late, the fierceness of religious bigotry has 
somewhat subsided, it is because the increasing hu- 
manity of the times has greatly modified the popu- 
lar idea of the Deity, who, even in the minds of the 
vulgar, has grown less a person, and more an ab- 
straction ; so that mystic faith, even among professed 
believers, has become historic and traditionary, and 
less what it used to be, vision and feeling. 

9. Closely connected with these duties, of sym- 



DUTIES OF SYMPATHY AND OF SELF RESPECT. 239 

pathy are those which are called duties of self- 
respect. In all communities in which the distinc- 
tion of ranks exists, that is, in almost all communi- 
ties which have advanced beyond the savage state, 
it is esteemed the duty of men and women so to 
conduct themselves, as to sustain the dignity and 
privileges of the order or caste to which they belong. 
Thus, to admit persons of a proscribed caste or sect, 
a man of color in America, a Jew in many parts 
of Europe, to sit at table with us, — and much more, 
habitual association and intermarriage with such 
persons, — is esteemed in several codes of current 
morals, a grave offence, # indicating a disposition to 
sacrifice the feelings and the comfort of those whom 
we are specially bound to regard, to the gratification 
of an idle or criminal caprice. The subject of ranks 
and castes, their origin and the social consequences 
thence resulting, belongs to the Theory of Politics ; 
but it. was necessary shortly to advert to it here, on 
account of the great influence thence exercised over 
every current code of morals, and the numberless 
inconsistencies and contradictions in current moral 
opinions thence resulting. 



* Lorqu'au theatre de la Guadeloupe, nous vimes toute la salle 
battre des mains a V Antony de M. Alexandre* Dumas, nous ne 
pumes reprimer un mouvement de pitie, en pensant que ceux-la meme 
qui applaudissaient a l'ceuvre, se croiraient deshonores s'ilsrencon- 
traient l'auteur dans un salon ; et que toutes ces femmes si emues a 
l'entendre peindre les passions qui les agitent, rougiraient de honte, 
seulement a la idee de figurer avec lui dans une fete. Victor 
Schoelcher, Des Colonies Francaises, ch. 14. 



240 THEORY OF MORALS. 



CHAPTER IX. 

DUTIES TO GOD ; OR RELIGIOUS DUTIES. 

1. We have explained, in the first part, how it 
happens that duties to God hold a place not only in 
mystic, but also in forensic codes of morals. We 
have pointed out how there arises in the human 
mind, even in its most uncultivated state, the idea of 
invisible, supernatural personal agents, as being the 
causes of all those natural phenomena so intimately 
connected with the existence and well-being of man. 
We have indicated the gradual progress by which 
the idea, first of a supreme, and afterwards of a sin- 
gle, Deity, is finally arrived at. This single Deity, 
however, still remains in the minds of the multitude, 
a personal God, made and modelled after the image 
of man. Especially is it believed that the will of 
God may be operated upon by substantially the same 
means which influence the human will ; whence 
follows the conclusion, that as the phenomena of 
nature are but the voluntary acts of God, those 
means which can operate upon God's will may be 
able to control even nature itself. It is little to be 
wondered at, that a dogma so flattering to the senti- 
ment of self-comparison, so useful to the wise and so 
comforting to the simple, a dogma which teaches that 
not only the eternal laws of nature, but the infinite 
God himself, may be compelled to bend and yield to 
human incantations, should have been so implicitly 
received, and so zealously maintained. 



DUTIES TO GOD, OR RELIGIOUS DUTIES. 241 

It is upon this alleged personal nature of the 
Deity, that rests the whole superstructure, not only 
of the mystic theory of morals, but of the political 
and social importance of the priesthood ; and, also, 
that part of forensic morality, which inculcates what 
are called religious duties. 

2. As men everywhere necessarily frame after 
their own image the personal deity whom they 
adore, their ideas of the duties due to God have 
everywhere substantially depended upon their no- 
tions of the duties due to themselves and to eacb 
other. We have already seen how all the changes 
which have taken place in current moral theories 
have been gradually embodied into current theologi- 
cal dogmas ; though from the conservative spirit of 
all priesthoods, and from the influence of ancient 
sacred books, theology always lags a good way be- 
hind, and experiences a certain difficulty and delay 
in coming up to the opinions of the times. Hence, 
in all inquisitive ages, the priesthoods of every sect 
are divided into two parties, — an old school which 
stickles for the past, a new school which strives to 
accommodate itself to the present.* 

3. It seems to be at once a characteristic and a 
cause of stationary civilization, when forms and cer- 



* This adaptation of popular religious traditions and current scrip- 
tures to the moral opinions of the times is what Kant recommended 
and defended under the name of the method of moral interpretation. 
Though he was the first to give it a name, and candidly to recognize 
in it the substitution of new moral meaning in place of the meaning 
actually intended to be conveyed by the authors of the tradition or 
the writing, the method itself had been practised from time imme- 
morial, and grows, in fact, out of the necessities of human nature. 

21 



: 'i 



242 THEORY OF MORALS. 

emonies usurp the place of, and rise superior to, the 
very sentiments of which in their origin they were 
the expressions and the signs. In such states of so- 
ciety, of which history affords us several remarkable 
instances, ceremonious religions have prevailed ; and 
besides, an infinity of reverences towards his earthly 
superiors, man has been burdened with a still heav- 
ier load of religious formalities. The priesthood, 
indeed, who put themselves forward as the appointed 
and necessary mediators between God and man have 
ever had an interest in multiplying, or at least in up- 
holding these formalities, as making the approach to- 
wards God the ^nore difficult, and their services, in 
consequence, the more necessary. The founders of 
new religions and new sects have generally satisfied 
their own reason, and at the same time recommended 
themselves to favor, by denouncing the greater part 
of prevailing forms as burdensome and unnecessary, 
absolving from their observance, and declaring God 
to be most accessible, if not only accessible, to the 
unassisted prayers of faithful solitary saints. But in 
all these new sects, a new priesthood presently arises, 
who soon become as great sticklers for forms and 
ceremonies as any of their predecessors. 

4. In barbarous warlike nations, God is represent- 
ed under the image of a bloody tyrant, jealous of his 
authority to the last degree and implacable in his en- 
mities, to be appeased only by the most abject sub- 
mission, even the sacrifice by his worshippers of their 
children or themselves. Through the conservative 
influences above pointed out, and notwithstanding 
great changes of manners, such notions, in communi- 



DUTIES TO GOD, OR RELIGIOUS DUTIES. 243 

ties which have become stationary, may continue to 
survive for an indefinite period. Thus in India, 
even at the present day, God the destroyer has ten 
times as many votaries as either God the preserver, 
or God the creator. 

As nations have made a greater progress in civili- 
zation, they have given the Deity a milder charac- 
ter. He has been conceived of as a chieftain indul- 
gent to his clansmen, a king beneficent to his sub- 
jects, even as a father careful of his children. Yet 
everywhere the popular mind, in which the senti- 
ment of benevolence has been yet but very imperfect- 
ly developed, has dwelt more upon the power than 
the goodness of God ; and the very theologians who 
have insisted most upon God's infinite benevolence 
have, in general, insisted still more upon what they 
call his infinite justice. They cease, indeed, to rep- 
resent him as demanding the sacrifice of human vic- 
tims ; they claim instead the sacrifice, less bloody 
but not less dreadful, of man's reason, man's pleas- 
ures, even moral sentiment itself; since holding that 
morality is nothing but obedience to the commands 
of God, they hold that there is no moral law which 
the command of God may not dispense with, and set 
aside. As humanity increases, that mystic-idealism 
begins to spread, which considers God less as a per- 
son, and more as a personification of the sentiment of 
benevolence ; humanity deified. As this idea gains 
ground, the rigor of religious duties is greatly relaxed, 
and the ascetic notion of the sinfulness of pleasure 
falls into disgrace even with mystic moralists. 

5. From the very dawn of science, a controversy, 



■ 



244 THEORY OF MORALS. 






which yet remains pending, necessarily arose be- 
tween the philosophers and the mystics. The phi- 
losophers by their study of nature, by which term 
they designate the entire phenomena of which men 
are cognizant, always have been, and always will 
be, led to perceive and to acknowledge that there is 
and must be, a Cause of nature, an inscrutible, incom- 
prehensible, infinite Cause of the existence, order, and 
progression of the universe ; a Cause behind all those 
causes which observation will ever be able to demon- 
strate. They perceived that it was the idea of such 
a Cause personified, and mixed up with many fan- 
ciful notions and absurd traditions, in which popular 
religious opinions originated. That Cause, therefore, 
they called, God ; and while the mystics only assert- 
ed, on the faith of tradition and testimony, that God 
did exist, and had been seen in dreams and visions, 
and by the corporeal eye, the philosophers undertook 
to prove that God must exist. It is to them that the 
theologians are indebted for all their arguments both 
those a priori and those a posteriori, for the being 
of a God. 

But the very same observation of nature which 
led the philosophers to conceive of God as an inscru- 
table, incomprehensible, infinite Cause, obliged them 
to reject those popular notions which represented this 
Cause under the image of a person, and the laws of 
nature as his volitions, volitions which men might 
influence and might change. They perceived that 
this theory did not correspond with the phenomena. 
They had discovered, that the laws of nature are 
fixed, immutable, and totally beyond the power of 



DUTIES TO GOD, OR RELTGIOUS DUTIES. 245 

man ; and they rejected, as idle tales, the thousand 
stories of magic, miracles, and prophecies, which the 
mystics cited to sustain their cause. Beaten in argu- 
ment, the mystics called in the mob to their aid ; 
they denounced the philosophers as atheists ; banish- 
ed them, or put them to death. 

6. Finding it useless, in the then existing state of 
knowledge and humanity, to attempt to teach their 
doctrines openly, the greater part of the philosophers 
were content, for the sake of peace and their own 
security, to admit, to a certain extent, the personal 
character of the Deity ; and it was they who invent- 
ed the celebrated argument from final causes to .prove 
that intelligence and benevolence are attributes of 
God. Hence arose the various schools of semi- 
mystics, who have labored so incessantly and to so 
little purpose, to reconcile faith with reason ; and 
who have struggled by all sorts of expedients and 
plausibilities, to render the current theology of their 
day in some measure consistent with the progressive 
discoveries of science. 

7. The thorough mystics, however, rejected from 
the beginning this union of religion with philoso- 
phy. * They perceived, that in the proposed alliance 
between faith and reason, faith must be always los- 
ing and reason always gaining ; till at length the 

* The thorough philosophers were much of the same mind. Thus 
Bacon, in the Second Book of the " Advancement of Learning,'' 
speaks of " the extreme prejudice which both religion and philosophy 
have received, and may receive, by being commixed together; as 
that which undoubtedly will make an heretical religion, and an ima- 
ginary and fabulous philosophy." Upon this point, however, as upon 
most others, Bacon was unable to conform to his own teaching. 

21* 






246 THEORY OF MORALS. 

idea of a personal God upon which their whole sys- 
tem rests, must gradually disappear. They at once 
denounced, and down to the present moment have 
continued to denounce the semi-mystics as no better 
than the philosophers, as unbelieving, faithless men, 
and, as such, worthy of universal execration and the 
severest punishments. 

8. The definition of Faith has, indeed, been the 
great battle ground of the several sects of mystics and 
semi-mystics. Faith, according to the lowest of the 
semi-mystical schools, is, belief founded upon reason. 
It therefore can hardly be considered to indicate any 
peculiarity of moral character or ever to be wanting, 
except where the intellect is defective. 

A more numerous class of semi-mystics have de- 
fined faith to be, belief founded upon testimony of 
things above reason, but not contrary to it ; and the 
merit of faith has been represented to consist in the 
compliment paid to the Deity in listening attentively 
and readily to his messengers. But the compliment 
in this case seems rather to be paid to the messen- 
gers themselves. 

The thorough mystics have maintained, that faith 
is a belief, or rather a vision of God as the only 
agent always and everywhere present, supernaturally 
infused into the mind by special grace, whereby the 
heart of man is changed, and he is enabled to act 
righteously ; all morality not springing from this 
source being mere selfishness and deceit, and no 
better than filthy rags. This faith has nothing to 
do with reason. It is not only above it ; it tramples 
reason under foot. Credo quia impossibile. Though 



DUTIES TO GOD, OR RELIGIOUS DUTIES. 247 

the prevalence of semi-mysticism in the last two 
centuries hardly allows this doctrine to be taught, in 
the more celebrated schools, in this rude form, it still 
retains, in many countries, a strong hold on the pop- 
ular mind. 

Mystic faith, as ordinarily inculcated, consists in 
putting on the spirit of a little child ; continuing to 
receive the religious opinions in which one has been 
educated with implicit reverence and submission ; 
repulsing with indignation all question or doubt ; and 
not only admitting the speculative truth of these 
opinions, but making them the basis of our whole 
course of action. This is Catholicism, this is Pusey- 
ism, and this also at the present day is Lutheranism, 
Calvinism, Quakerism, and Methodism ; for though 
the founders of new sects have ever extolled their 
own internal light, that is to say, their own fancies 
and their own judgments, above all established opin- 
ions, that is a liberty which they have not allowed 
to their disciples ; or rather, which their disciples 
have not allowed to themselves. Such a liberty, in- 
deed, would be utterly inconsistent with that unity 
of faith on which the existence of every sect depends. 

9. At first thought it might seem difficult to con- 
jecture how pure credulity and mere childishness 
could ever be extolled, especially in civilized and 
even enlightened communities, into a crowning vir- 
tue and a binding duty. Yet the explanation is easy 
and plain. Social institutions and current morality, 
though arising in fact from the very nature of man, 
have hitherto as far as teaching has been concerned, 
been almost universally based upon mere authority. 



248 THEORY OF MORALS. 

Not having arrived at that pitch of science to be able 
to give the reason why institutions and manners are, 
or should be, as they are, men have rested them 
either upon the authority of wise ancestors, or the 
instructions of inspired prophets, or jointly upon 
both. They are so, and they ought to be so, because 
the wisdom of ancestors so arranged, or God so com- 
manded. Now any person, who undertakes to call 
this wisdom of ancestors, and these divine commands 
into question, is looked upon — and, if he have no 
better substitute to propose, not altogether without 
reason — as a reckless and unquiet person, who for 
the sake of gratifying his own prying disposition or 
love of superiority, is willing to risk the destruction 
of that sentiment of respect for established institu- 
tions and opinions, which — not knowing any other 
more solid basis on which to rest them — men sup- 
pose to be the only foundation, not of political insti- 
tutions only, but of morals also. Hence systems of 
morals purely forensic have inculcated conformity to 
current religious observances, and profound respect 
for current religious opinions, as imperative duties. 

The mystics themselves, moulding God after their 
own image, and supposing him to think and feel as 
they do, of course believe that any doubt or hesita- 
tion as to any opinions which they entertain about 
him, or any ceremonies which they practise, and 
much more their total rejection, must be regarded 
by the Deity as no better than rank rebellion ; and 
so long as God was believed to visit the sins of indi- 
viduals not upon themselves only, but upon the 
whole community, — a notion not yet wholly ex- 



DUTIES TO GOD, OR RELIGIOUS DUTIES. 249 

tinct, — that man was necessarily regarded as a bad 
man, who, in the pride of his reason, did not hesitate 
to expose the whole community to the anger and 
fury of an outraged God. 

10. The great spread of late and the numerous 
and continual confirmations of the philosophical doc- 
trine, that the phenomena of nature are governed by 
fixed and undeviating laws ; the constantly increas- 
ing proofs of the efficacy of reason and knowledge, 
as instruments of power and means of promoting hu- 
man happiness; and more than all, the division of 
Christendom by virtue of an increasing exercise of 
reason, into numerous sects and sub-sects, which in 
their controversies with each other have been ob- 
liged, even against their own professed principles, 
to call in reason to their aid, — these causes have 
greatly shaken that profound reverence for authority 
which so many moral codes have inculcated as abso- 
lutely essential to the character of a good man. Her- 
etics are no longer burnt at the stake ; and though it 
be yet hardly safe for any man to express opinions 
upon religious subjects in which he is not sure of 
the support of some considerable sect, yet the degree 
of merely moral disapprobation with which such a 
man is regarded is rapidly diminishing ; and in some 
communities is on the point of disappearing alto- 
gether. 

11. Mystical systems of morals, and even those 
parts of forensic systems which are founded upon 
mystical considerations, give special occasion for Hy- 
pocrisy, which is reckoned upon all hands among 
the most detestable of the vices. 



250 THEORY OF MORALS. 

Hypocrisy consists - in a false pretension to virtue. 
It is employed as a means of drawing selfish advan- 
tages from an undeserved character for goodness. It 
involves the criminality of fraud. It tends to raise a 
suspicion even against virtue itself; and it includes a 
false assumption of superiority to which men do not 
patiently submit. 

Most systems of mystical morality inculcate a per- 
- petual struggle against human nature; a struggle in 
in which the most enthusiastic must constantly fail. 
Mysticism, moreover has a necessary tendency to de- 
feat itself. Wonder is the foundation of it ; and nov- 
elty, or uncommonness, is essential to wonder. Let 
any thing become for a long time the sole or principal 
matter of contemplation, it grows familiar and com- 
mon-place ; and the sentiment of wonder is no longer 
excited by it. Thus, the more thoroughly a man 
becomes a mystic, the more certain he is to cease pre- 
sently to be one ; or if he continues to be a mystic 
in theory, he ceases to be so in practice. Mysticism 
as a motive of action, loses its influence over him. 
But mysticism is, and long and most extensively has 
been, a great source of consideration, influence, char- 
acter, wealth, and power. Of course, Hypocrisy 
steps in to supply the place of enthusiasm. What 
was once sincere and hearty, now becomes merely 
formal. There is a vast deal of profession and pre- 
tension, with very little of reality ; and as mysticism 
assumes the character of a mere dead letter, a creed 
full of absurdities, and a set of childish and tedi- 
ous forms repeated by rote, but without intelligence 
or feeling, — the doubt creeps on, whether morality 






DUTIES TO GOD, OR RELIGIOUS DUTIES. 251 

itself, — morality being supposed wholly dependent 
upon mystic considerations, — -be any thing more 
than a fable or a dream. 

12. It seems to be this disagreeable feeling of doubt 
and uncertainty, this general perception of the insuffi- 
ciency of the mystic hypothesis, and the want of 
some more solid basis upon which to rest the theory 
of morals, which, under the name of want of Faith, 
has been pointed out by Mr. Carlyle, and some other 
late writers, as the great need, the prevailing pain 
and misery of the age.* 



* Mr. Carlyle is a rhetorician. He vamps up and passes off old and 
common thoughts under the disguise of new phrases, and under a 
similar disguise, he vends some new thoughts too, which would hardly- 
pass current, at least in England, if plainly spoken out. The phrase, 
leant of faith, like many other of his phrases, has a very happy 
ambiguity. He has not thought it judicious to come to an open quar- 
rel with the mystics, who still exercise a despotic and intolerant 
power over public opinion, and who in Great Britain control the courts 
of criminal law, and exercise a strict censorship over the press. Faith 
is a very convenient term. The mystics may, and will, understand 
it as meaning mystic faith, which is, indeed, in a rapid, though at 
the present moment, a silent progress of decay ; and which not all the 
united efforts of bigotry and fanaticism will be able to revive. It is 
evident, however, that Mr. Carlyle regards this mystic faith as being, 
in his own phraseology, a sham, a humbug, a lie. This possible 
interpretation, however, serves as a honeyed cate for stopping the more 
than triple mouth of that watchful, but not very sagacious Cerberus, 
called, in England, the religious public. The want of faith to which 
Mr. Carlyle actually refers is a want of faith in the reality of duty 
and of virtue, a sort of eddy or counter current created by mystical 
faith in the modern European mind, which, in these times, has be- 
come more powerful than the main stream. 



252 THEORY OF MORALS. 

CHAPTER X. 

MORALS A PROGRESSIVE SCIENCE. 

1. In estimating the moral character of actions 
there are three different sets of consequences to be 
taken into consideration ; sets of consequences which 
are often in opposition to each other. 

Those which may be called Consequences of the 
first order, are palpable consequences which result 
at once to certain particular assignable individuals. 

Those which may be called Consequences of the 
second order, are remoter consequences liable to result 
at some future time to individuals assignable or not. 

Those which may be called Consequences of the 
third order, are consequences not limited to particular 
individuals, but which spread and affect a whole 
community, or perhaps, the whole human race.* 

2. In proportion as knowledge increases, and the 
rational faculties are more called into exercise, conse- 
quences of the second and third orders come to be 
more and more attended to, and exercise a constantly 
greater influence oyer moral judgments. It thus 
appears that the science of morals, like all other sci- 
ences, is progressive in its nature, advancing contin- 
ually as experience extends. As a community grows 
more and more intelligent, the science of morals 



* Bentham was the first to point out these useful and important 
distinctions. See Theory of Legislation, Vol.1. Principles of Legis- 
lation, ch. 10. 



MORALS A PROGRESSIVE SCIENCE. 253 

makes a constant progress, and diverges more and 
more from the rude and narrow maxims and notions 
of early times. This change relates primarily to 
theoretical morals. We shall presently proceed to 
inquire, upon what advancement in the practice of 
morality depends. 

3. The moral opinions in which all men are and 
always have been agreed, relate to acts of which the 
immediate consequences in pleasure or pain to oth- 
ers, are very obvious ; and as to the remote conse- 
quences of which, no question has yet been raised. 

It is only necessary, however, to raise such a ques- 
tion, and to advance some probable reasons for suppos- 
ing that the consequences of the second and third 
orders which result from any action, are contrary to 
those of the first order, to throw doubt upon the best 
settled moral precepts. For example, alms-giving, 
down to a very recent period, had been long and 
very extensively regarded as a meritorious act, how- 
ever indiscriminately and thoughtlessly those alms 
might be bestowed. Of late, however, forceable 
reasons have been adduced to prove that indiscrimi- 
nate alms-giving is attended by great evils of the 
second and third orders ; whence has resulted a de- 
cided change of opinion, as to the moral character of 
indiscriminate charity.* 

* An American Professor of Moral Philosophy — President Way- 
land — recently published a Treatise, upon the " Limitations of Moral 
Responsibility," the real object of which is, to show, that men are not 
under any moral obligation to regard consequences of the second and 
third order. The argument proceeds wholly upon mystical grounds; 
and affords a curious illustration of the sort of aid afforded by mysti- 
cism to morality. 

22 



I 






254 THEORY OF MORALS. 

4. What are called the decisions of common sense 
upon questions of morals, are like the decisions of 
common sense upon other matters. They are found- 
ed upon the first and most obvious appearances of 
things. They are often right, and often wrong. 
They require the same scientific revision as the de- 
cisions of common sense upon all other topics. 
Such a revision, as in other cases, will serve to con- 
firm a part of these decisions ; but it will show that 
another part of them, and no inconsiderable part, ori- 
ginate in that constitution of human nature, which, 
in so many cases, renders error the necessary prede- 
cessor of truth. 



PART THIRD. 



CONNEXION BETWEEN HAPPINESS AND VIR- 
TUE, AND TRUE MEANS OF PROMOTING 
BOTH. 



CHAPTER I. 

CONNEXION BETWEEN HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE. 

1. As respects the influence of virtue upon hap- 
piness, two questions may be asked ; 

First. Does the increase of virtue in general, tend 
to increase the happiness of the human race ? 

Second. Does the increase of virtue in any given 
individual tend to increase the happiness of that in- 
dividual ? 

Or these two questions may be put in another 
form, thus ; 

First. Does the increase of virtue in a community 
tend to increase the happiness of that community ? 

Second. Are individuals happy in proportion as 
they are virtuous ? 

2. In order to answer these two questions, it is to 
be considered, that the happiness or misery of indi- 
viduals, and of course the happiness or misery of 
communities and of the human race, — which are 
only collections of individuals, — is dependent upon 



256 THEORY OF MORALS. 

four different sets of circumstances ; 1st. The gen- 
eral constitution of nature, including the general 
constitution of human nature ; 2d. The peculiar 
constitution of each individual that is to say, his 
peculiar degree of sensibility to different pleasures 
and pains ; 3d. The acts of the individual himself; 
and, 4th. The acts of others. 

3. This analysis and enumeration of the causes 
of human happiness and misery, enable us easily to 
give an answer to the first of the questions above 
put, the question whether the increase of virtue 
tends to increase the sum total of human happiness. 

One of the four elements, which together produce 
the happiness or misery of men, is, the acts of others. 
Now, just in proportion as virtue exercises an influ- 
ence over the conduct of men, just in that same pro- 
portion does the happiness of others become an ob- 
ject to be aimed at ; and just in that proportion will 
men be likely to contribute to the happiness of each 
other. On the other hand, so far as virtue ceases to 
exercise an influence over the conduct of men, in 
that same degree is the disposition to consult the hap- 
piness of others diminished ; and just in the same 
proportion are men likely to become causes of suf- 
fering to each other. 

4. Indeed, the tendency of the increase of virtue 
to increase the sum total of human happiness, is so 
very obvious to the most cursory observation, that 
legislators and philosophers, in all ages, have exerted 
their utmost ingenuity to lure men into the paths of 
virtue ; and to this end, and in order to enlist the 
selfish sentiments into the cause of humanity, they 



CONNEXION BETWEEN HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE. 257 

have, almost with one voice, peremptorily answered 
the second of the above questions also in the affirma- 
tive ; and have proclaimed, far and wide, that the 
increase of virtue, in each individual, tends directly 
to increase his individual happiness ; in other words, 
that individuals are happy in proportion to their 
virtue. 

5. This proposition, however, notwithstanding the 
numbers who have concurred in it, including many 
who hardly concur in any thing else, is as palpably 
false, as the proposition already disposed of, respect- 
ing the tendency of virtue to increase the happiness 
of communities, is obviously true ; and the general 
perception of its falsity, — although few are able, 
through the cloud of authority in its favor, clearly 
to detect that falsity, and plainly to point it out, — 
together with the singular unanimity of priests, phi- 
losophers, and rulers, in preaching it to others, while 
they neglect to act upon it themselves, has led to a 
suspicion, very generally diffused, that moralists, and 
especially moralists by profession, are, after all, but a 
set of artful persons who seek to entrap men into a 
course of conduct, of which all the benefits result to 
others, — and to the moralists themselves, as a part 
of those others, — and of which all the burden falls 
upon the actors. Thus, while all men praise virtue, 
and are very anxious to induce others to practise it, 
there is widely diffused, even among professed ' mor- 
alists themselves, a secret doubt, whether morality, 
after all, be not a cunning contrivance to make the 
many contribute to the service of the few. 

6. That morality is founded upon the nature of 

22* 



258 THEORY OF MORALS. 

man, and that, to a certain extent, virtuous conduct 
is, and always must be, a source of pleasure, and 
often of the most exquisite and most lasting pleasure, 
to those who act virtuously, has been sufficiently 
demonstrated in the first and second parts of this 
Treatise. But that virtuous conduct will always 
secure happiness, and happiness in proportion to the 
degree of virtue, is not true. Of the four elements 
of human happiness and misery above pointed out, 
our own actions form but one. The most virtuous 
conduct in the world cannot secure us against the 
miseries that originate in the three other elements. 
No degree of virtue can cure the toothache, or guard 
against it ; no degree of virtue can cure that heart- 
ache which springs from the ingratitude or treachery 
of others. Indeed, the more virtuous a man is, the 
more sensitive he becomes to that sort of suffering.* 
Whosoever performs a virtuous act, always feels a 
pleasure from it ; if not a positive pleasure, at least 
the negative pleasure of relief from a pain of benev- 
olence. But the very performance of that virtuous 
act, may expose him who performs it, to infinite 
pains of other kinds. To perform an act of high 
virtue, is often an act of the highest imprudence ; 
and though the consciousness of virtue be a great 

* " It is not the value of what they lose by the perfidy and ingrati- 
tude of those they live with, which the generous and humane are 
most apt to regret. Whatever they have lost, they can generally be 
very happy without it. What most disturbs them is, the idea of per- 
fidy and ingratitude exercised towards themselves ; and the discordant 
and disagreeable passions which this excites, constitute, in their own 
opinion, the chief part of the injury which they suffer. " — Smith's 
Moral Sentiments, Part I. Sect. II. 



CONNEXION BETWEEN HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE. 259 

consolation, that very sentiment of self-comparison 
which makes it so, frequently exposes the virtuous 
man, especially if his conduct be remarkably and 
singularly virtuous, to suffer the acutest pains from 
the indignities heaped upon him by an ignorant, 
bigoted, ferocious multitude, who do not understand, 
and who cannot appreciate him. 

It may happen and it has happened, and it will 
happen again, that the virtuous man having sacri- 
ficed wealth, reputation, friends, health, all the com- 
forts and pleasures of life, the pleasures of virtue 
alone excepted, to a strong desire to confer benefits 
upon his fellow-men, finds, at last, in a lonely and 
melancholy death, perhaps by his own hand, a refuge 
from calamities no longer endurable ; while he in 
whom selfishness so often disguised under the name 
of prudence, has triumphed over every more gener- 
ous emotion, creeps up by crooked paths, aided by a 
base prostitution of talent, to wealth, power, influ- 
ence, and fame ; lives to a good old age, admired and 
applauded as success always is ; dies comforted by 
priests, with the hope of a blessed immortality, — 
for such men, as they grow old, are apt to grow de- 
vout, — and passes away lamented and bepraised, as 
a great and good man. Is not this the story of 
ninety-nine in a hundred of those who are recorded 
in the world's history as having risen to eminence, 
authority, and renown ? Was virtue the ladder by 
which they rose, and rise ? What is called poetical 
justice, must be sought for in poetry, not in life. 

No doubt the pleasure of virtue has a permanency 
which belongs to few other pleasures. Many other 



260 THEORY OF MORALS. 

pleasures pass away with the moment; but the 
recollection of having performed a virtuous act, 
especially if it were an act of extraordinary virtue, 
and often though it were only an act of duty, when- 
ever it recurs, produces, or may produce, an emotion 
of present pleasure, a feeling of present superiority, 
which is always agreeable. The recollection of crim- 
inal actions, or of failures in duty, often produces, 
on the other hand, a present pain of inferiority, even 
though years of success and prosperity have inter- 
vened. This is true ; but it is also true, that in 
point of fact, the pleasures of virtue are often com- 
pletely outweighed by a complication of pains of 
other kinds ; and that the pains of vice and even of 
crimes, are often much more than counterbalanced 
by a combination of pleasures of other kinds, — 
pleasures, perhaps, which those very vices and crimes 
have been the means of procuring. 

That it is impossible for a man over whom moral 
sentiment exerts a powerful influence to be happy in 
what he considers a wrong course of conduct is 
doubtless true. But what of that ? It by no means 
follows, that in acting virtuously, he must of course 
be happy. So far from it, such a high degree of 
moral sensibility often exposes him to a Scylla of 
moral suffering on the one hand, and a Charybdis of 
all other kinds of suffering on the other ; and too 
often there is no passage between ; into one or the 
other he must fall, or alternately into both. 

7. Hence the distinction so universally made, be- 
tween the Right and the Expedient. The Right is 
that which will afford us the greatest amount of 



CONNEXION BETWEEN HAPPINESS AND VIRTUE. 261 

moral pleasure ; the Expedient is that which will 
afford us the greatest sum total of pleasures of all 
kinds, moral pleasure included. Now there are very 
few men in whom the sentiment of benevolence is 
so strong, that the Expedient does not constantly ap- 
pear to them to be in opposition to the Right ; and 
for whom, in fact, the Expedient is not in opposition 
to the Right. 

8. Never, indeed, was there a doctrine more false, 
more unjust, or more dangerous to morality, than 
the doctrine that success is the test of merit ; and 
what is but a modification of the same idea, the 
doctrine that happiness is the necessary concomitant 
of virtue, and misery the inevitable attendant upon 
vice. These are notions better fitted for the syco- 
phant and the parasite, than for the philosopher or 
the moralist. One man plants and waters, but it 
happens too often that another reaps. Even so far 
as mere reputation goes, and laying all other pleas- 
ures out of account, neither talent nor virtue can se- 
cure even that ; while it is often snatched up and 
enjoyed, by knaves and by fools. Some men are 
born great, others have greatness thrust upon them ; 
while those who achieve it, achieve it often by the 
most discreditable means. An enlightened posterity, 
in a few instances, is able to do that justice which 
bigoted, and undiscerning contemporaries deny ; but 
even that late and unavailing reparation occurs but 
seldom, and forms the exception, not the rule. 
Posterity in general, does but reecho the judgment 
of contemporaries. 

9. That virtue in an ordinary, that is to say, in an 



262 THEORY OF MORALS. 

average* degree, is favorable to the happiness of in- 
dividuals, is very certain ; at the same time it is not 
less certain that virtue in an extraordinary degree is 
unfavorable to the happiness of individuals. A man 
virtuous in an extraordinary degree, finds little sym- 
pathy and no companionship ; he stands a great 
chance to pass with his neighbours for a fanatic or a 
fool ; his perpetual scruples always stand in the Way 
of his advancement, and even of his employment ; 
not to mention those pains to which the contempla- 
tion of vice and misery expose him, or that desire to 
remedy this vice and misery, which he finds no 
means to gratify, and which constantly torment him. 

10. Hence it ought to be the aim of the enlight- 
ened moralist npt so much to produce individual in- 
stances of extraordinary virtue, individual instances 
of self-sacrifice for the benefit of mankind, as to 
raise the general standard of morals, and thereby to 
produce a general increase of virtue, and at the same 
time of happiness ; and that too without any sacri- 
fice of individuals, and those the most meritorious. 

It becomes, then, a most interesting inquiry, how 
is this great object to be accomplished ? How is a 
general increase of virtue to be produced ? In other 
words, how shall we cause the Right and the Expe- 
dient to coalesce ? 



MEANS OF RAISING THE STANDARD OF MORALS. 263 

CHAPTER II. 

MEANS OF RAISING THE STANDARD OF MORALS. ' 

1. We have shown that the sentiment of benevo- 
lence lies at the bottom of all moral distinctions 
and of all virtuous conduct. Delicacy of moral 
perception, and Performance of virtuous actions, 
depend, primarily, upon the force of that sentiment. 
Hence it follows, that in order to raise the standard 
of morality, and to produce a general increase of 
virtuous actions, it is necessary to increase the ave- 
rage force of the sentiment of benevolence ; for a 
little observation will be enough to convince us, that 
this sentiment contributes quite as much to give 
efficacy to the general maxims of morals, what is 
called the Moral Law, as it does to the performance 
of particular acts obviously beneficial. 

2. The infant, like the man grown, is influenced 
in its conduct, by those pleasures and pains only 
which attend upon the operation of its perceptive 
and conceptive faculties. At first, these are only a 
very few of those pleasures and pains known as 
selfish pains and pleasures. But gradually, the 
sphere of its observation and sensibility is enlarged ; 
and presently it comes to take notice of the pleas- 
ures and pains of those about it, particularly and 
principally, in the first instance, of the pains and 
pleasures of its nurse, whom it soon begins to ad- 
mire, to fear, and to love, and whose pains and pleas- 






264 THEORY OF MORALS. 

ures very soon exercise a perceptible influence upon 
its conduct. 

The child finds that certain acts on its part, 
though they may be pleasurable to itself, give pain 
to its nurse, who, from being nurse, soon comes to 
be tutor ; which actions, as soon as it begins to learn 
the use of language, it finds its nurse and tutor to 
designate by the epithets naughty, bad, wrong ; 
while certain other actions which give the nurse 
and tutor pleasure, though painful perhaps to the 
child, are designated by the epithets, good, right, 
proper. The child may be totally ignorant, and 
generally is, why or how these acts give pain or 
pleasure to its nurse and tutor ; nor does it make 
any difference, whether the above mentioned epithets 
are applied to those acts, from selfish or from moral 
considerations, or for reasons altogether fanciful and 
false. All that the child concerns itself about is, the 
apparent pleasure or pain which those actions give to 
its nurse and tutor ; and just in proportion to the de- 
gree of its benevolence, — and very great differences 
in the degree of this sentiment may be observed at 
a very early age, — it will be disposed to do those 
acts which it finds agreeable to its nurse, and to 
abstain from those acts which it finds disagreeable. 

3. Three other motives combine to produce the 
same line of conduct ; to wit ; the fear of punish- 
ment, the hope of reward, and that love of praise, 
which is one of the modifications of the sentiment 
of self-comparison. This latter motive must be dis- 
tinguished from the love of approbation, which is 
only a modification of the sentiment of benevolence : 



MEANS OF RAISING THE STANDARD OF MORALS. 265 

commendation being a mark of pleasure on the part 
of him who commends, and being therefore a proof 
that we have given pleasure. It must be confessed, 
however, that the love of praise and the love of ap- 
probation become so intimately commingled and unit- 
ed, that it is generally impossible to tell where the 
one begins and the other ends. Of these four mo- 
tives, to wit, the sentiment of benevolence, the fear 
of punishment, the hope of reward, and the love of 
praise, on which depends the conformity of a child's 
conduct to the moral precepts delivered to it by its 
nurse and tutor, the sentiment of benevolence is by 
far the most influential ; and it will always be found 
that the most obedient, and what are called the best 
children, that is to say, the children most observant 
of those rules of morality which they receive from 
their tutors and parents, are the most benevolent 
children ; the children who feel most pain at inflict- 
ing pain on others, and most pleasure in giving oth- 
ers pleasure. While bad children are those in whom 
there is a deficiency of this sentiment either consti- 
tutional, or produced by ill treatment, or bad man- 
agement. 

4. As children grow older, and as the conceptive 
and reasoning faculties begin to develope themselves, 
individuals who possess the same degree of benevo- 
lence will act very differently ; a difference which 
arises not only from the different conclusions to 
which they come with respect to the consequences 
of actions, by reason of a difference in the force of 
their concepive and rational faculties, but also from 
the different relative force of the various other senti<- 
23 



■■ 



266 THEORY OF MORALS. 

merits, or capabilities of pleasure and pain, upon 
which human action depends. 

As the child advances to manhood ; as the circle 
of his knowledge and acquaintance extends ; and as 
the exclusive admiration and trust with which he 
regarded his nurse, his parents, or his tutor, dimin- 
ishes, the approbation and disapprobation of those 
about him, the current moral maxims of the society 
in which he moves, gradually supersede and take 
the place of the instructions of the nursery. 

If he be a person of strong intellect, he begins to 
a certain extent to think for himself ; and to modify 
the moral system in which he has been educated, by 
the results of his own observation and experience. 
But in this respect, most men remain always children. 
They look upon such and such actions as right or 
wrong, virtuous or vicious, meritorious or criminal, 
merely because they have been taught to call them 
so ; and it seems to be the object of a great class of 
moralists, including almost all the doctors of the mys- 
tic schools, to keep mankind or at least the mass of 
mankind, so far as morals are concerned, for ever 
in the position of children, entirely dependent for 
moral maxims upon their instructions. Hence the 
practice of confession in the Romish church, and that 
doctrine so much insisted upon by all the Christian 
sects, that men, in the presence of God, that is to 
say, in the presence of those who take it upon them- 
selves to speak in God's name, ought to become hum- 
ble, docile, and teachable as little children. 

5. Whether a man forms his own moral system 
for himself, or whether he receives it by tradition 
from his nurse, his parents, his tutor, or his priest, in 



MEANS OF RAISING THE STANDARD OF MORALS. 267 

either case his adherence to the maxims of that sys- 
tem, whatever they might be, will equally depend, 
so long as he entertains no doubt as to their bind- 
ing force, upon the ordinary influence which moral 
sentiment exercises over him ; and of that moral 
sentiment, the first and fundamental ingredient is, 
the sentiment of benevolence. Hence the great dif- 
ferences to be observed among men, in their conform- 
ity to their own professed moral systems ; and hence 
the general division of men into the two classes of 
good and bad, conscientious and unprincipled. 

So much for the observance of moral maxims in 
general ; the disposition to observe which is usu- 
ally denominated conscientiousness. 

6. As to conduct in particular cases, it is obvious 
that in proportion to the force of the sentiment of 
benevolence, will be the acuteness of moral percep- 
tion in such cases, and to a great extent, also, the 
tendency to act in conformity to that perception. 
Thus it constantly happens that men of great benev- 
olence are able to detect at once, in specific cases, 
the falsity of some prevailing moral maxim ; and, 
though they, of all men, have the greatest respect for 
moral maxims in general, it often happens that the 
impulse of humanity, in particular cases, overcomes 
that respect, and makes them act right, in defiance 
of the false morality in which they have been edu- 
cated. 

7. It is, therefore, evident that whether we wish 
to produce a greater and more general conformity to 
existing codes of morals ; or to bring about a refor- 
mation of those codes, and to make them more con- 
formable to truth and humanity ; both objects may 



268 THEORY OF MORALS. 

best and most effectually be accomplished, and can, 
in fact, only be accomplished, by increasing the aver- 
age force of the sentiment of benevolence. This 
means, therefore, is justly entitled to be esteemed at 
once conservative and reformative : conservative of 
all that is good in existing systems, reformative of 
all that is bad. 

8. Our means of increasing the force of the senti- 
ment of benevolence depend upon two laws of hu- 
man spontaneity, of which the first relates to the 
power of habit over the faculties and inclinations of 
mankind. It is perfectly well established that, with- 
in a certain limit, the exercise of any faculty or sen- 
timent tends to give that faculty or sentiment a 
greater power or predominancy. This is particularly 
the case during the periods of infancy, childhood, and 
youth, and it is upon this circumstance that the 
power of education, in moulding mankind, princi- 
pally depends.* It may be laid down as a very gen- 
eral rule, that men remain all their lives essentially 
what they are at the moment they attain the limit 
of adult age : though there are certain influences 
coming daily more and more into operation, which 
tend to limit and diminish the generality of this rule, 
and to make men throughout their whole lives more 
subject to change than formerly. The discussions 
constantly carried on through the medium of the pe- 
riodical press, are one of the most powerful of these 
influences. It is these influences growing stronger 
and stronger which have gradually produced during 
the last four centuries such immense changes of 

* The nature and influences of habit will be fully investigated in 
the Theory of Education. 



MEANS OF RAISING THE STANDARD OF MORALS. 269 

opinion in certain parts of the globe, changes which 
are still going on with accelerated rapidity. 

Undoubtedly there exists a great difference in the 
original sensibility of different individuals to the 
pains and pleasures of benevolence, as well as to all 
other pains and pleasures ; a difference which no 
process of education or discipline can remove or 
overcome. Nevertheless the degree of force which 
that sentiment actually and ordinarily exercises, will 
depend, to a very great degree, on the extent to 
which it is called into operation during the flexible 
periods of childhood and youth. 

9. The second means of increasing the force of 
the sentiment of benevolence, and which, indeed, is 
essential to the employment of the first means, de- 
pends upon a fact, pointed out in the first part of 
this Treatise, the fact, namely, that the presence of 
other pains ordinarily tends just in proportion to 
their intensity to neutralize or to counteract the 
force of the sentiment of benevolence. While men 
are tormented with hunger, thirst, fatigue, bodily 
diseases, the pains of sexual desire, of inferiority, of 
malevolence, of envy, of fear, or by any other great 
pains, it is absurd to expect them to grow virtuous, 
or to attempt to make them so. All these pains, 
when carried to a high degree, have power enough, 
not only to neutralize the sentiment of benevolence, 
but to impel to actions directly opposed to it. It is 
not Pleasure, as the great majority of moralists, 
from superficial observations, have hastily concluded, 
it is Pain, which is the great enemy of virtue ; and 
to render mankind more virtuous it is essentially ne- 
cessary, in the first place, to relieve their pains, to 



270 THEORY OF MORALS. 

render them more happy. The power of pleasure 
to produce virtue, is at least equal to that of virtue 
to produce pleasure. 

10. These considerations will enable us to under- 
stand how it is, that civilization is considered favor- 
able both to happiness and to virtue ; and it will also 
enable us to explain how Rousseau, a writer of great 
benevolence and sagacity, fell into the paradox in 
which he found so many followers, of exalting the 
savage above the civilized state. 

The progress of civilization doubtless tends to 
relieve the whole community from certain pains, 
especially those terrible pains of famine, to which 
savage communities are particularly exposed, and to 
create a large class of persons, who, as they enjoy a 
superior degree of knowledge and wealth, which are 
the means of many pleasures, become capable, in 
consequence, of a superior degree of happiness, and 
of a superior degree of virtue. 

But, though it be true that existing civilization, 
to a certain extent and among a certain class, is 
favorable to happiness, and therefore to virtue, — 
as is proved by the large increase of what is call- 
ed the middle class, throughout Europe, and the 
attendant rise of the standard of morals during sev- 
eral centuries last past ; yet it must be confessed that 
a very large portion of most communities have shar- 
ed these benefits only to a very small extent ; and 
that they purchase that small share, only by the 
most assiduous and fatiguing labor ; while at the same 
time, they find themselves exposed to new pains of 
inferiority, among the acutest of all pains, and new 
pains of desire which, with the discovery of new 



MEANS OP RAISING THE STANDARD OF MORALS. 271 

means of enjoyment, and the more general diffusion 
of knowledge, increase day by day, and prove hardly 
less fatal to happiness and to virtue, than the worst 
evils of the savage state. 

It is easy, therefore, to understand how a man like 
Rousseau, at once observant and imaginative, keenly 
alive to pains of inferiority, and whom his own vari- 
ed experience had made familiar with all the evils of 
existing social arrangements in every department of 
society, should have been led to cry out against that 
civilization, the evils of which he felt so keenly, and 
knew so well ; and even to prefer to it the rudeness 
of savage life ; especially when we consider that 
Rousseau had no accurate knowledge of what savage 
life is ; and that the old fable of a primitive golden 
age of simplicity and innocence served to give it a 
poetic coloring. # 

11. The same circumstances which led Rousseau 
to the adoption of this opinion, give it, so soon as it 
was promulgated, a remarkable currency. 

Shortly after Rousseau's death, the influence of 
those pains felt not by him only, but by a vast mul- 
titude whose eloquent spokesman he was, joined to 
the rapid decay of old feudal and mystic prejudices, 
impelled men to act in a new direction, and gave 
birth to a Revolution in which all the maxims of tra- 
ditional morals were, for a time, forgotten and super- 
seded ; and, though old notions, after suffering great 
curtailments, and after the overthrow of many of the 



* There are some additional circumstances serving to give plausi- 
bility to this idea of the superior happiness of the savage state, which 
will be stated in the Theory of Wealth. 






272 THEORY OF MORALS. 

most obnoxious of those institutions of which Rous- 
seau and his followers complained, have again recov- 
ered the ascendency, it is, however, with difficulty 
that they retain it. 

12. As yet we have seen only the beginning of 
the end. Notwithstanding all the beneficial changes 
that have taken place, a vast deal remains to be 
done. A revolution half finished, a revolution in 
progress, is often worse, for the time, than the very 
grievances in which it originated. The existing so- 
cial condition of Europe and her colonies, if things 
were to stop where they are, is, perhaps, even less 
favorable to happiness and to virtue, than that against 
which Rousseau and the philosophers of the eigh- 
teenth century so earnestly protested, and which 
led to that great social crisis known as the French 
Revolution. 

As things now are, the higher, and even the mid- 
dle classes, suffer almost as much as the lower. Re- 
collections of the past and dread of the future inspire 
them with constant feelings of doubt and anxiety. 
Conceptive pains upon the part of the few, pains of 
all sorts upon the part of the many ; and as a neces- 
sary consequence, Hatred upon both sides ! In the 
midst of so much suffering, Humanity is hard press- 
ed ; and Virtue can with difficulty hold her own. 

Here, however, we have arrived at topics which 
belong to other branches of these Rudiments, — the 
Theory of Politics and the Theory of Wealth, 



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